[solved] wpasupplicant Upgrade May Break WiFi Connectivity

[KrunchTime]

I saw this bug when I upgraded my laptop earlier today.  Unfortunately, my desktop was upgraded a day or two ago and I have verified the bug to be valid.  I'm unable to connect at all via a wireless connection.  Based on my setup and some of the bug report submissions, this may only affect Broadcom wireless cards.

https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=849077

[musca]

and the reason was: system was not fully dist-upgraded

[KrunchTime]

How did you come up with that conclusion?

[mld]

just a follow up. A RTL8188eus USB WIFI dongle stopped working as well after du, an internal intel golan still works just fine.

[musca]

Hello Krunchtime,

I've read the message #60  where the original reporter had to admit:

> Lisandro, what NM version are you using? A related bug has been fixed by
> mbiebl recently:
>
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=835822#67

Interesting. I was using 1.4.2-3. After trying this workaround/fix I updated
to 1.4.4-1 which is what I'm currently using.

In fact network-manager 1.4.4-1 was released to unstable one hour before wpasupplicant 2.6-2.

greetings
musca

[musca]

Hello mld,

as mentioned above: "new mac address randomization breaks WiFi with various drivers".
see https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=835822

It seems network-manager still doesn't play nicely with all of the wifi drivers.
You can try adding

[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no

to your /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf

greetings
musca

[yes, Krunchtime, it's a bug in network-manager, not wpasupplicant.]

[mld]

Hi musca,

Yes, it works. So it is a mac address rand bug in Nemo.

thanks a bunch!

Ps. wicd should have worked I guess ootb. Silly me switching earlier this year ;-)

[KrunchTime]

Hello Krunchtime,

I've read the message #60  where the original reporter had to admit:

> Lisandro, what NM version are you using? A related bug has been fixed by
> mbiebl recently:
>
> https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=835822#67

Interesting. I was using 1.4.2-3. After trying this workaround/fix I updated
to 1.4.4-1 which is what I'm currently using.

In fact network-manager 1.4.4-1 was released to unstable one hour before wpasupplicant 2.6-2.

greetings
musca

Hmmm...re-reading the OP in that bug report thread, it appears that the OP is mixing testing and unstable.  I'm surprised the Debian folks even entertained the initial report.

[KrunchTime]

Hello mld,

as mentioned above: "new mac address randomization breaks WiFi with various drivers".
see https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=835822

It seems network-manager still doesn't play nicely with all of the wifi drivers.
You can try adding

[device]
wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no

to your /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf

greetings
musca

[yes, Krunchtime, it's a bug in network-manager, not wpasupplicant.]

Is the above fix a temporary fix?  In other words, is the above setting something that may cause issues with particular WiFi drivers in the future?  Also, I was using the latest version of network-manager before the wpasupplicant upgrade and was not experiencing WiFi issues.

[KrunchTime]

Modifying /etc/NetworkManager/NetworkManager.conf didn't work for me.  I've resorted to using ethernet.  I'm going to attempt to downgrade wpasupplicant until this gets ironed out.

My network card:  Broadcom Limited BCM4352

This is twice now that WiFi has been broken under Unstable on my desktop.   

Edit:  I wonder if the upgrade to the broadcom-sta-dkms package might be the real issue.  It was upgraded the same day (12/20/2016) as wpasupplicant.

No recent open bug reports for the broadcom-sta-dkms package.

[musca]

uhm, things get more complicated the deeper we look into this case.

Yes, it's a temporary work-around. You are unhiding your mac address.

Maybe worth a bugreport to debian BTS, to help testing the corner cases with your hardware.

greetings
musca

[KrunchTime]

You are unhiding your mac address.  Thanks, that's definitely something one should know.

Downgrading to wpasupplicant v2.5-2+v2.4-3+b1 resolved the WiFi issue on my desktop.

[zash1958]

100% the same on my Lenovo Notebook

Also a BCM4352 WIFI adapter and only downgrading wpasupplicant to wpasupplicant v2.5-2+v2.4-3+b1 cured the problem

Creating the configuration for Network manager not helps