Bug 25736

Assigning to tv for the Network Centre.
(I could not find the program, hence SRPM, in question).

Assignee: bugsquad => thierry.vignaud

(In reply to Lewis Smith from comment #1)
> Assigning to tv for the Network Centre.
> (I could not find the program, hence SRPM, in question).

Not sure which program you are referring to.
I have changed the Sources to refer to the spacific versions in Mga7 that I have installed. I will also put in one dump from a connection attempt to a wpa2-psk access point.

Note:
1574618922.483107: Initializing interface 'wlp58s0' conf '/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wireless.d/NETGEAR45-5G.wpa' driver 'nl80211' ctrl_interface 'N/A' bridge 'N/A'

and

1574618931.012619: wlp58s0: 0: a0:63:91:d9:5f:fe ssid='NETGEAR45-5G' wpa_ie_len=0 rsn_ie_len=20 caps=0x11 level=-65 freq=5765  wps
1574618931.012628: wlp58s0:    skip RSN IE - key mgmt mismatch
1574618931.012637: wlp58s0:    allow in non-WPA/WPA2
1574618931.012645: wlp58s0:    skip - privacy mismatch

Notice that the "privacy mismatch, it seems because nl80211 reports RSN while the request is for WPA2. (which are  supposed to be synonymous).

Again I presume the default driver was switched from nl80211 which it got changed to a couple of years ago, to wext, a highly deprecated driver.

Source RPM: Network center and wpa_supplicant 2.6 in Mgin Mga7a6, and libdrakx-net-2.32 and wpa_supplicant 2.7 in Mga7 => wpa_supplicant-2.9-1.1.mga7.src.rpm , drakx-net-2.42-1.mga7.src.rpm

Mageia 7 is EOL since July 1st 2021.
There will not have any further bugfix for this release.

You are encouraged to upgrade to Mageia 8 as soon as possible.

@reporter, if this bug still apply with Mageia 8, please let us know it.

@packager, if you work on the Mageia 7 version of your package, please check the Mageia 8 package if issue is also present. In this case, please fix the Mageia 8 version instead.

This bug report will be closed OLD if there is no further notice within 1st September 2021.

The program in which the driver (wext) is listed is in 
/lib/libDrakX/network/connection/wireless.pm
(I managed to get two misspellings into the name. Sorry.)
wext is deprecated for nl80211. wireless.pm uses wext still in Mga8. 
in package libdrakx-net-2.55-1.mga8

I have not been able to test Mga8 thoroughly as to whether wpa-supplicant now allows RSN rather than WPA2. Because of covid, my laptop, which is used when I travel, has had no use for the past almost 2 years and certainly not after I upgraded to mga8.
I hope this will change in the next while.

Version: 7 => 8

If one includes RSN as one of the allowed connection types (I think that is what I meant by RHL) then wpa_supplicant seems to work now with nl80211 as the driver.

I have now done 3 things
1)I replace wpa_supplicant with the newest version 2.10-2. They have worked to improve the selection process, and it seems at least now to pick the strongest/stronger BSSID for a given SSID. This helps a huge amount both in stability of the selection and speed of selection.


2)  I have replaced wext by nl80211 in /lib/libDrakx/network/connection/wireless.pm. wext craps out totally if there are too many BSSID visible tothe network card (It lists nothing, rather than say the strongest 20 whereas nl80211 lists everything. I have not had trouble yet.



3) In the NetworkCenter desktop icon, I run draknetcenter with sudo. That will of course not work if the user does not have the sudo permissions to run draknetcenter. wpa_cli is proper program to run with wpa_supplicant, NOT iwlist but wpa_cli runs properly only under root, not under a user. In wireless.pm, if the system is run as root, then wpa_cli is used, bot otherwise iwlist is used. Both wext and iwlist have been deprecated for over 10 years, but the Mageia support for wireless has really lagged. Ie, wpa_cli and nl80211 should always be used, but this would require that networkcenter be run as suid root or that wireless.pm perl program be replaced by an suid root program.

I have been doing this for almost a month now, and things seem to be working much more stably than before. 

So, instructions:
Install wpa_supplicant 2.10 from cauldron resolving dependencies possibly by hand (installing them from Mga8 seems to work)

Change wext to nl80211 in wireless.pm

Give the users who would start networkcenter sudo priviledges to sudo run
/usr/bin/draknetcenter
(You do this in /etc/sudoers.conf or in /etc/sudoers.d/)
In the icon (right click on the icon, go to Properties->Application) insert sudo in front of the command.

As I said this all seems to work. Now I do not know if there are side effects on other than wireless connections.