Another OpenBSD Wifi Thread

[commodorejohn]

I recently pulled out my old OpenBSD laptop and did a wipe and fresh install of 6.2 on it - but stupidly, I didn't save the wireless configuration that took me so much effort to get working before. So I'm back to having wireless not working no matter what I do, and while I can find thread with similar symptoms, none of them seem to have a clear solution.

So here's how things stand: the post-install process installed the firmware for the wifi, which is a built-in Atheros device that shows up as ath0. /etc/hostname.ath0 contains the following:

-chan -bssid -wpakey
nwid "arbol" media mode 11g
wpakey "(censored)"
dhcp

ifconfig using these options will run without complaint and reflect these values in its report:

ath0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
         lladdr 00:11:85:1a:9f:27
         index 1 priority 4 llprio 3
         groups: wlan
         media: IEEE802.11 autoselect (DS1)
         status: no network
         ieee80211: nwid arbol chan 7 bssid 90:c7:92:57:bb:c0 wpakey (censored) wpaprotos wpa2 wpaakms psk wpaciphers ccmp wpagroupcipher ccmp

The "media" value changes periodically to "DS1 mode 11b" or "OFDM6" like it's activelly trying to connect, but "status" never changes to anything besides "no network." Running dhclient on it gives the "no link ........... sleeping" message that so many other threads have mentioned. dmesg has nothing in particular to say about it after the ath0 device is recognized during boot.

Can someone help me figure out what's going on here? By everything I read in the man pages, it sounds like I should have everything correctly configured, but it just refuses to work...

[ibara]

Originally Posted by commodorejohn

I recently pulled out my old OpenBSD laptop and did a wipe and fresh install of 6.2 on it

Perhaps off-topic, but maybe you want to install 6.3 on the laptop instead?

Originally Posted by commodorejohn

/etc/hostname.ath0 contains the following:

-chan -bssid -wpakey
nwid "arbol" media mode 11g
wpakey "(censored)"
dhcp

I use an external urtwn(4) device. This is the entirety of my /etc/hostname.urtwn0:

nwid Puffy
wpakey istheOpenBSDmascot
dhcp

(Sure, come over and steal my wifi, I don't mind.)
And this minimal configuration happily just works with one of those off-the-shelf travel wifi routers (this one, to be precise, though not an ad/endorsement of it). I would imagine if you need more than the minimal /etc/hostname.XXX, then you're either connecting to something that requires security/wpa_supplicant or you've otherwise heavily configured your wifi router.

[commodorejohn]

I actually tried 6.3 first, but A. I couldn't get some packages to install because they wanted pango which wanted something that wanted a specific version of freetype that wasn't available, and B. it had the same problem anyway.

Anyway: yeah, I actually did have a simpler hostname.ath0 like yours and that had the same problem. The more elaborate current one was generated by that old wiconfig shell script that got my wireless issues resolved last time I was using this laptop (under 5.6, I think?) but this time it's not cutting it. I tried wpa_supplicant and wifind as well, but neither resolve the issue.

I don't think the router should be configured in any particularly arcane manner, though I suppose I've been meaning to hook up a proper router anyway and get off the garbage Comcast modem wifi, so it probably wouldn't hurt to just give it a shot and see if that changes anything...

[shep]

Sometime between 5.3 and 6.3, ccmp became the default cipher. If your router is confitgured for tkip, you would also see a previously working system fail to connect.

If this is the case, ccmp is deemed more secure so the best fix would be to set the router cipher to ccmp. Otherwise you can use a wpacipher entry in your /etc/ifconfig.ath0 as described in ifconfig(8).

[ibara]

Originally Posted by commodorejohn

I actually tried 6.3 first, but A. I couldn't get some packages to install because they wanted pango which wanted something that wanted a specific version of freetype that wasn't available

This should be reported.

[commodorejohn]

Originally Posted by shep

Sometime between 5.3 and 6.3, ccmp became the default cipher. If your router is confitgured for tkip, you would also see a previously working system fail to connect.

If this is the case, ccmp is deemed more secure so the best fix would be to set the router cipher to ccmp. Otherwise you can use a wpacipher entry in your /etc/ifconfig.ath0 as described in ifconfig(8).

Ah. Good information. I'll take a poke at that and see if it resolves the issue.

Originally Posted by ibara

This should be reported.

Hmm. Don't know if it's been properly filed as a report or not, but I do know someone else already raised the issue about a month ago. Those are the same symptoms I got (though for a different package with the same ultimately missing dependencies.)

[commodorejohn]

Originally Posted by commodorejohn

Ah. Good information. I'll take a poke at that and see if it resolves the issue.

(Ron Howard narrating) It didn't.

Tried setting ifconfig to use tkip and no change. Here's the output from ifconfig:

ath0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
        lladdr 00:11:85:1a:9f:27
        index 1 priority 4 llprio 3
        groups: wlan
        media: IEEE802.11 autoselect (DS1)
        status: no network
        ieee80211: nwid arbol wpakey (swordfish!) wpaprotos wpa2 wpaakms psk wpaciphers tkip wpagroupcipher ccmp

I'll have a go at using a proper router tomorrow, I think.

[LeFrettchen]

Could be interesting to see informations on your network.
Could you also display a scan of your WiFi ?

$ doas ifconfig ath0 scan | grep arbol