Description of problem: NM is inconsistently able to find non-broadcasting SSIDs. I think this used to work more often than I'm seeing it work now, and it's happening on more than one network card. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): NM-0.7.0-0.11.svn4133.el5 How reproducible: Pretty often. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Try to connect to a WAP which is not broadcasting its SSID and to which NM has not already connected. Actual results: Generally will fail to connect. Expected results: Should find it! Additional info:
This is with ipw3945, right? Solution for this is to add scan capabilties to ipw3945 so we can actually probe-scan the stupid hidden APs... It's a 1 line patch: range->scan_capa = IW_SCAN_CAPA_ESSID; We added scan capabilties in 5.2 but didn't patch the out-of-tree drivers that were capable of doing probe-scans, which was basically just ipw3945. mac80211, ipw2200, and hostap have been running with these patches since 5.2 got released. They enable NM to direct the driver to probe-scan the AP and thus discover the hidden APs much more easily since they don't normally show up in scans in any useful manner without being probed.
This is pretty easy to test and a very low-risk change because: 1) the patch is informational only, it simply adds a capability 2) the only consumer of this capability in the distro right now is NetworkManager 3) we added scan capabilties for other drivers back in 5.2 4) does _not_ require any additional driver or wpa_supplicant testing
See also: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=466938 which is almost definitely the same problem.
Yes, this was with ipw3945, but I think it wasn't the only one having that problem.
Created attachment 322735 [details] Scan capability advertisement patch for ipw3945 against RHEL 5.3 kernel #ifdef check is for WE >= 20 becuase that's what current RHEL kernels advertise.
Created attachment 322738 [details] Updated patch; ipw3945 only supports SSID scans
I haven't been able to reproduce this. Suzanne, are you able to retest?
With NM-0.7.0-2.el5, Converse, ipw3945, attempting to connect to a hidden SSID using WPA2 and requiring MAC addresses to be in a known list fails. When it asks me to re-enter the security information, even though I specified WPA2 initially, it doesn't even give me the option of WPA at _all_, which means that I do not know if it would work if it tried a second time. I know my passphrase is right, as is the protocol. This appears to not be fixed. It worked fine before I disabled SSID broadcast, so that is the only difference. I believe that this is snap 5, although I'm completely unsure as I've been very sick with a flu for weeks now.
An advisory has been issued which should help the problem described in this bug report. This report is therefore being closed with a resolution of ERRATA. For more information on therefore solution and/or where to find the updated files, please follow the link below. You may reopen this bug report if the solution does not work for you. http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHBA-2009-0243.html