WPA problem

[Nils Kassube]

Andy wrote:
> 2008/11/18 Andy <stude.list at googlemail.com>:
> > I am having problems connecting to a WPA network in Ubuntu.
>
> I have also tried configuring WPA manually.
>
> My wpa_supplicant.conf file contains:
>
> ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
>
> ap_scan=2
>
> network={
>         ssid="MySSID"
>         key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
>         pairwise=TKIP
>         group=TKIP
>         proto=WPA
>         psk="MyPassword"

the psk line is wrong. You need the 64 hex digit string generated by 
wpa_passphrase. That would be with the command

wpa_passphrase "MySSID" "MyPassword"

in a terminal.

> Driver does not support WPA.

The problem could be ndiswrapper of Ubuntu 6.06 or the wrong psk (together 
with a misleading error message). Is it the same error with the correct 
psk value?

> The windows driver supports WPA as I can connect to the AP in Windows
> (though I would rather use Ubuntu ;) ).

Well, if the Windows driver supports WPA you know at least that the 
hardware is suitable. However the ndiswrapper layer has to support is as 
well. I remember that I had problems with WPA / WPA2 running (K)ubuntu 
6.06 (but I didn't use ndiswrapper). I tried WICD which was in a very 
early state at that time and it worked albeit not reliably. It finally 
worked with networkmanager without a problem when I upgraded my system to 
Kubuntu 7.04. I would suggest these steps:

1. Try again with the correct psk value.
2. Try our WICD (see <http://wicd.sourceforge.net/>).
3. If that doesn't work, install the latest version of ndiswrapper (see 
<http://sourceforge.net/projects/ndiswrapper/>).
4. If none of the above works, download the LiveCD image for Ubuntu 8.04 
and check if 8.04 supports your WLAN hardware. If that works, consider 
upgrading to 8.04.


Nils