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Unable to connect to wireless access point with WPA2

asked 2011-12-16 15:16:18 +0000

Stephen gravatar image

updated 2011-12-18 16:45:29 +0000

My wireless router is setup to use WPA2-Personal encryption with AES. When I startup and click on my ESSID it naturally asks me for my passphrase. Fine and dandy but then it hangs for a bit before asking me for the passphrase again. Ok. So logging into the router with a wired connection confirms that I know the correct passphrase.

What I see is the following behavior with NetworkManager:

  1. Click on ESSID I want to connect
  2. Get GNOME3 dialog asking for passphrase
  3. Window closes
  4. Get non-GNOME3 dialog asking for passphrase
  5. Window closes
  6. NetworkManager attempts to log into another access point and repeats steps 2-5.

In previous versions I could manually setup my wireless connections. The new dialog is attempt to remove the magic from installing by hiding all the complexity from the user. What I see are its short falls are:

  1. No why to understand why a connection is failing.

  2. Why the double dialogs in two different styles asking for the passphrase. Annoying.

  3. Why is NetworkManager trying to connect to another access point after the first fails?

  4. Where are the manual setup features? (e.g Advanced user settings - yes danger will robinson)

  5. How to restart a connection?

  6. How to restart network if you had to? It use to be that you could run /etc/init.d/network restart to have that happen. In Fedora 15 I could never get the wireless to comeback after the laptop awoke from hibernation. I always had to restart the machine.

Wireless access card information

lspci | grep -i net

(rev 02)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG [Golan] Network Connection
(rev 02)

dmesg | grep -i iwl

iwl3945: Copyright(c) 2003-2011 Intel Corporation
iwl3945 0000:0c:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
iwl3945 0000:0c:00.0: Tunable channels: 11 802.11bg, 13 802.11a channels
iwl3945 0000:0c:00.0: irq 47 for MSI/MSI-X
ieee80211 phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'iwl-3945-rs'
iwl3945 0000:0c:00.0: loaded firmware version

Router information

sudo iwlist scan

which I cut out the other access points:

          Cell 03 - Address: 00:1F:90:E6:41:F7
                Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
                Quality=51/70  Signal level=-59 dBm  
                Encryption key:on
                Extra: Last beacon: 2096ms ago
                IE: Unknown: 00053977657374
                IE: Unknown: 010882848B0C12961824
                IE: Unknown: 030101
                IE: Unknown: 0706555320010B1B
                IE: Unknown: 200100
                IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version ...
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answered 2011-12-16 16:07:01 +0000

ztank1013 gravatar image

You may try to run from the command line the network manager connection editor:

sudo nm-connection-editor

then identify and delete the current non working WPA2 connection on the Wireless tab, finally try to manually recreate it using the Add... button.

Most importantly, remember to setup at this point the password in to the Wireless Security tab.

I had a similar problem on my old f16 laptop installation and unfortunately I had to repeat this manual configuration on each new WPA2 access point I had to use.

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Asked: 2011-12-16 15:16:18 +0000

Seen: 14,429 times

Last updated: Dec 18 '11