Bug 1743730

Summary:	don't enable FT-PSK in supplicant, if driver does not support it
Product:	Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8	Reporter:	Thomas Haller <thaller>
Component:	NetworkManager	Assignee:	Thomas Haller <thaller>
Status:	CLOSED ERRATA	QA Contact:	Desktop QE <desktop-qa-list>
Severity:	urgent	Docs Contact:
Priority:	unspecified
Version:	8.1	CC:	atragler, bgalvani, fgiudici, lrintel, rkhan, sukulkar, thaller, vbenes, wchadwic
Target Milestone:	rc
Target Release:	8.0
Hardware:	Unspecified
OS:	Unspecified
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:	NetworkManager-1.20.0-3.el8	Doc Type:	If docs needed, set a value
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2019-11-05 22:30:06 UTC	Type:	Bug
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Thomas Haller 2019-08-20 14:41:03 UTC

1.20.0 release enables support for FT (fast BSS transition).

It enables it (towards wpa-supplicant), if supplicant announces that it was built with support for it.


But some drivers don't do well with this, so we need to honor also the per-interface capabilities and avoid setting it.

Basically: backport upstream commit [1]. See commit message for further details.


[1] https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/NetworkManager/NetworkManager/commit/2f8a4e90f0fd0f900996e3081d49f8799bba4c6f

Comment 3 Thomas Haller 2019-08-20 14:49:34 UTC

> Answer the following 3 questions:

> 1. What is the impact of waiting until the next release to include this BZ?   Reviewers want to know which RHEL features or customers are affected and if it will impact any Layered Product or Hardware partner plans.

If users happen to use a driver that does not support FT, and if their AP supports it, then they might end up unable to connect to the Wi-Fi network.

Possibly most drivers in stock RHEL support this. Though, I did not confirm whether that's the case 100%. Regardless, I think for a user it should still be possible to install an out-of-tree driver (on their own accord) and use it successfully. There are known non-upstream drivers that suffer from this problem.


> 2. What is the risk associated with the fix?  Reviewers want to know if the fix is contained, testable, and there is enough time to verify the work w> ithout impact the schedule or other commitments.

The fix is quite trivial. See the referenced patch.

Very worst case, the patch results in NM now *wrongly* detecting FT support as missing (despite being actually available). That would not be critical, it's just a Wi-Fi feature that then would be not used, while it could. Having said that, I tested the patch, and such a wrong detection seems purely hypothetical. It should work as intended...

> 3. Provide any other details that should be weighed in making a decision (Other releases affected, upstream status, business impacts, etc).

Fix is merged upstream.

This only affects upstream release 1.20.0 (which is packaged in rhel-8.1).

Comment 7 errata-xmlrpc 2019-11-05 22:30:06 UTC

Since the problem described in this bug report should be
resolved in a recent advisory, it has been closed with a
resolution of ERRATA.

For information on the advisory, and where to find the updated
files, follow the link below.

If the solution does not work for you, open a new bug report.

https://access.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2019:3623