From: Pavel Roskin (proski_at_gnu.org)
Date: 2002-05-18 01:15:09 UTC
Hello!
The latest version of HostAP (2002-05-16) works sporadically for me, and I'm trying to understand what factors are relevant. It looks like that some cards don't work as access points at all, so I'm using two cards that I've seen working with Prism2-2002-05-02. Both are ZoomAir cards.
# cardctl ident
product info: "ZoomAir 11Mbps High", "Rate wireless Networking", "", ""
manfid: 0x0156, 0x0002
function: 6 (network)
I run HostAP on both sides (the same happens with Orinoco driver on the client side, HostAP is just more verbose). The cards are constantly trying to accociate, but without success.
The encryption is off, but I see a lot of "invalid crypt" errors.
On the access point side:
wlan0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"12345678901234567890"
Mode:Master Frequency:2.422GHz Access Point: 00:40:36:01:7B:7F
Bit Rate:2Mb/s Tx-Power:-10 dBm Sensitivity=1/3
Retry min limit:8 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:7964 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:360 Invalid misc:23391 Missed beacon:0
wlan0: association request: from 00:40:36:01:7b:f1 to 00:40:36:01:7b:7f len=32 capability=0x0001, listen_interval=1 - old AID 2 wlan0: TXEXC - fid=0x00c1 - status=0x0001 ([RetryErr]) tx_control=000c
retry_count=0 tx_rate=0 fc=0x0810 (Mgmt::1) addr1=00:40:36:01:7b:f1 addr2=00:40:36:01:7b:7f addr3=00:40:36:01:7b:7f wlan0: STA 00:40:36:01:7b:f1 TX rate lowered to 55
On the "station" side:
wlan0 IEEE 802.11-DS ESSID:"12345678901234567890"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.422GHz Access Point: 44:44:44:44:44:44
Bit Rate:2Mb/s Tx-Power:-12 dBm Sensitivity=1/3
Retry min limit:8 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0/92 Signal level:-90 dBm Noise level:-90 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
wlan0: TXEXC - fid=0x0530 - status=0x0004 ([Discon]) tx_control=000c
retry_count=0 tx_rate=0 fc=0x0108 (Data::0) addr1=00:00:00:00:00:00 addr2=00:40:36:01:7b:f1 addr3=ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff wlan0: INFO - fid=0x03f2 - len=2 type=0xf200 LinkStatus=6 (Association failed)
I have checked the value of "resp" in handle_authen() on the AP side, and it's always 0 (WLAN_STATUS_SUCCESS). I guess the error on the AP side is indicated by "RetryErr".
I tried to downgrade to Prism2-2002-05-02, but it didn't help - I'm getting the same errors.
Another interesting observation - often (almost always in case of Symbol Spectrum24 as client), the ESSID in the association request processed by handle_assoc() is damaged - the third and the fourth bytes become 0xFF. This causes bogus "not our SSID" replies. If ESSID is indeed different, there are no calls to handle_assoc().
If ESSID is two bytes long, this doesn't happen, and only the only errors in the kernel log are similar to the ones described above.
While writing this message, I have found that "cardctl eject" on both cards followed by "cardctl insert" and setting the parameters (essid on both and managed mode on the client) causes them to associate after some time (one minute maybe). It worked with short ESSID "12", but not with long ESSID "12345678901234567890".
-- Regards, Pavel Roskin