As a new Verizon FiOS customer, I just acquired an Actiontec MI424WR
GEN2 wireless router.  This router apparently refuses to associate
until a key has been presented.  To be safe, I have patched
/etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wireless-tools to associate with the access
point *twice*.   If you would prefer, I could instead rewrite the
script to accumulate options and then make a single call to iwconfig,
which might work for more platforms.

The fault may lie in the iwl4965 driver rather than with the access
point.



Norman
--- /etc/network/wireless-tools-pre-up.dist	2008-07-24 09:08:30.000000000 -0400
+++ /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wireless-tools	2009-08-15 11:05:40.045722045 -0400
@@ -1,5 +1,7 @@
 #!/bin/sh

+set -x
+
 IWCONFIG=/sbin/iwconfig

 if [ ! -x $IWCONFIG ]; then
@@ -106,3 +108,7 @@
   $IWCONFIG "$IFACE" commit
 fi

+if [ -n "$IF_WIRELESS_AP" ]; then
+  $IWCONFIG "$IFACE" ap $IF_WIRELESS_AP
+fi
+

Sorry for not responding earlier. This problem may be fixed in the latest
version in unstable (30~pre9-3), since it retries settings that failed after
the interface is brought up. Can you check if you still experience this bug?

Making a single call for all settings is possible, but if one option fails the
result is indeterminate.

 > On Sat, Aug 15, 2009 at 12:54:54PM -0400, Norman Ramsey wrote:
 >
 > > As a new Verizon FiOS customer, I just acquired an Actiontec MI424WR
 > > GEN2 wireless router.  This router apparently refuses to associate
 > > until a key has been presented.  To be safe, I have patched
 > > /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wireless-tools to associate with the access
 > > point *twice*.   If you would prefer, I could instead rewrite the
 > > script to accumulate options and then make a single call to iwconfig,
 > > which might work for more platforms.
 > >
 > > The fault may lie in the iwl4965 driver rather than with the access
 > > point.
 >
 > Sorry for not responding earlier. This problem may be fixed in the latest
 > version in unstable (30~pre9-3), since it retries settings that failed after
 > the interface is brought up. Can you check if you still experience this bug?

It will take me a little thought to figure out how to persuade
aptitude to install this driver, but I will do so and check.

As a followup, I eventually had to patch
/etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wireless-tools to try 100 times to associate
and to sleep between each one.  I'd be thrilled if the new driver
fixed the problem.

Do you know if the new driver is compatible with a lenny kernel or if
I will need another kernel?


Norman

I had occasion to reboot, and now the wireless card is back to its old
evil ways.  Again the symptom is that I have to try repeatedly to
get the card to associate with the access point.  I believe I mentioned
that I wound up using a loop:

  if [ -n "$IF_WIRELESS_AP" ]; then
    associate_limit=100
    while $IWCONFIG "$IFACE" | grep Not-Associated > /dev/null &&
          [ $associate_limit -gt 0 ]
    do
      sleep 2

      echo "Reassociating $associate_limit" >&2
      /sbin/ifconfig "$IFACE" up
      $IWCONFIG "$IFACE" ap $IF_WIRELESS_AP
      associate_limit=`expr $associate_limit - 1`
    done
  fi

Grotesque, but nothing else seems to get the job done.


Norman


Package: wireless-tools
Status: install ok installed
Priority: extra
Section: net
Installed-Size: 404
Maintainer: Guus Sliepen <guus@debian.org>
Architecture: i386
Version: 30~pre9-4
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.7), libiw30 (>= 30~pre1)
Conffiles:
 /etc/network/if-post-down.d/wireless-tools 1f6530d0aee88247fe5001fe2f5f50d0
 /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wireless-tools 90ae1e300f250b82577989492b0c3379
Description: Tools for manipulating Linux Wireless Extensions
 This package contains the Wireless tools, used to manipulate
 the Linux Wireless Extensions. The Wireless Extension is an interface
 allowing you to set Wireless LAN specific parameters and get the
 specific stats.
Homepage: http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/Tools.html