Description of problem: I'm at the IETF sitting around with hundreds of APs around me (I'm guessing, I can't tell). Network Manager failed to connect to anything, and when I try to determine why I get: [root@pgpdev warlord]# iwlist wlan0 scan print_scanning_info: Allocation failed I can manually ifup and iwconfig to get on the network, but not being able to scan is a MAJOR issue. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): wireless-tools-29-2.fc9.i386 NetworkManager-0.7.1-1.fc10.i386 wpa_supplicant-0.6.4-3.fc10.i386 compat-wireless-2.6.31-rc4 iwl3954 driver How reproducible: Well, it's certainly 100% reproducible as I'm sitting here in Orchid East at the IETF. Steps to Reproduce: 1. Sit in this seat 2. Run iwlist wlan0 scan 3. Actual results: [root@pgpdev warlord]# iwlist wlan0 scan print_scanning_info: Allocation failed Expected results: Valid scan information. Additional info: Is there some limited buffer size of #scan results that arbitrarily limits the scan results?
FYI, the IETF is in Japan (so I'm living strange hours from a US standpoint) and I'm only in this environment through Friday, which is why I marked it Urgent. I'm happy to do any kind of testing.
Icky wireless_tools crud... :-( Do you get acceptable results from "iw dev wlan0 scan" instead?
Where can I find 'iw'? which iw /usr/bin/which: no iw in (/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/lib/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/lib/ccache:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin) I'll note that I think it's more than just the wireless-tools -- NM/wpa_supplicant also seems to fail to scan.
Hmmm...it is available for F10 through yum, but the version in F10 may not have the scanning support. The message you are reporting is coming from iwlist. However it is certainly possible that wpa_supplicant has a similar problem related to the size of the scan report. In fact, wireless extensions may have limitations involved here as well. FWIW, I think modern APs tend to further complicate things by including more IEs in their beacons and probe responses as well...
Let's see if a more modern version still builds for F-10... :-) http://koji.fedoraproject.org/koji/taskinfo?taskID=1798606
Well, I need some sleep.. I'll take a look at it tomorrow when I wake up and get back to the IETF and try to reproduce the problem. Unfortunately it IS location dependent. I saw it in Orchid East, but not in a different room. So if your iw build works should I try that or the one that's in the current F10 repos?
I don't think the current F10 one supports scanning, so you'll need to try the one from the build in comment 5. Anyway, that won't actually fix iwlist or wpa_supplicant. But it might give you a work-around for now and shed light on the actual issue.
I'm confused. How will 'iw' give me a workaround to NetworkManager/wpa_supplicant not working?
"I can manually ifup and iwconfig to get on the network, but not being able to scan is a MAJOR issue." The iw tool should give you a way to scan.
Ah, perhaps I should've been more clear meaning the the lack of an ability to scan means that NM cannot connect which means I cannot start my NM-controlled VPN which means I cannot get work done, and THAT is a Major issue. ;) At least being able to scan with iw I'll be able to report how many stations I see, but I need wpa_supplicant/NM to scan in order to effectively work. Being able to ifup is a partial workaround, enough to file this bug report, but isn't a full workaround. On the other hand moving to a different location in the venue such that I don't hear as many APs is also a workaround, but it doesn't fix the underlying bug that there's a hard limit to the amount of scan data and past that the system loses completely instead of returning only partial scan data.
FYI, iw does return data: [root@pgpdev warlord]# iw dev wlan0 scan | grep ^BSS | wc 149 596 4917 So, 149 APs... I'll attach the output from 'iw dev wlan0 scan' so you can see. Unfortunately NM croaked in this environment.... Not sure who's bug this is to fix, NM, wpa_supplicant, wireless-tools, .... But they all fail in this environment.
Created attachment 368996 [details] BSS list This is the output of "iw dev wlan0 scan" in the main room here at the IETF.
The common thread is likely the wireless extensions API, which is difficult/impossible to fix while maintaining backwards compatibility. That's why "we" (i.e. the upstream wireless developers) have developed the nl80211 API used by the iw tool. It's possible that wireless-tools could be fixed to at least deal with a subset of the available APs -- I found the error message, but didn't analyze the code too closely (I'm more of a kernel guy). wpa_supplicant may be similarly fixable, but I don't know that code at all. NM relies on wpa_supplicant, so it isn't really to blame. Thanks for the report re: iw and the further explanation of the issue. At least that points at the source of the problem.
John, you're welcome for the report. I figure that there's no way to get the code fixed if it doesn't get reported. Pretty much there is only one set of rooms at the IETF where I can see all 149ish APs, so GENERALLY I'm okay, but it would still be nice to get this fixed at some point. It seems to be a general integration problem, so I was hoping to get the right cross section of people to see the issue and maybe find a workaround. I was pretty sure it wasn't an issue in the kernel per-se, but more likely in the wireless extensions or the code that pulls the data out of the kernel. Are there any other people that should be CC'd on this bug?
Well, between me and Dan I think the right people are "in the room". :-) Dan probably knows better than I as to whether the wext driver to wpa_supplicant is fixable for this issue...
http://marc.info/?l=linux-wireless&m=121913261119320&w=2 http://marc.info/?l=linux-wireless&m=122289025108740&w=2
Interesting. So are those patches included in any F10 kernel?
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The first one was reverted due to userland ABI breakage. The second one was the stopgap. Incidentally, this is one of several similar cases where fixing wireless extensions without breaking something else became impossible.
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It's almost three years later and 7 fedora versions and I'm sitting at my sister-in-law's apartment seeing 71 access points and not being able to connect to the network until I reboot under Windows 7. How does one get around this problem?
Latest 30-pre upstream versions now contain a patch which fixes the issue, see: https://bugs.archlinux.org/task/15363 http://mailman.archlinux.org/pipermail/arch-commits/2012-August/174852.html http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html Dan, any chances to include the patch in Fedora on top of v29? Thanks.
(In reply to comment #21) > It's almost three years later and 7 fedora versions and I'm sitting at my > sister-in-law's apartment seeing 71 access points and not being able to > connect to the network until I reboot under Windows 7. How does one get > around this problem? The workaround is to use wpa_supplicant with the 'nl80211' driver (-D nl80211); if you want a manual scan, use 'iw dev wlan0 scan trigger' then 'iw dev wlan0 scan dump'. We'll probably get around to fixing wireless-tools, but /sbin/iw and nl80211 are the way forward here, not wireless-tools and WEXT.
Note that NM uses wpa_supplicant's nl80211 driver since 0.9.4, so it shouldn't run into the WEXT allocation issue.
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