[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#458125: network-manager offers only WEP encryption, no WPA

[David Madore]

Package: network-manager
Version: 0.6.5-3

The wireless configuration window for network-manager only offers the
choice between "WEP key (hexadecimal)" and "WEP key (ascii)": no WPA
here.  Yet wpa_supplicant, when invoked manually (whether with -Dwext
or -Dmadwifi, see below for card model) works perfectly, and enables
WPA as it should.  Why is network-manager unaware of this?

Whatever the reason, I think it would be wise to add a checkbox
somewhere in the network manager config to the effect of "force trying
to use WPA/WPA2, even if we believe wpa_supplicant can't do it on this
card" (or something): sometimes the user knows better than the
software!


The Wifi card in question has a PCI ID of 168c:001c (rev 01):

01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5006EG 802.11 b/g Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)

(this is found in an EeePC model p702).  I'm using MadWifi version
r2756 (20071018) with a special patch for this chipset (<URL:
http://madwifi.org/ticket/1679 >): as I mentioned, this gets
wpa_supplicant working perfectly with it (both with -Dwext and
-Dmadwifi).  Kernel is 2.6.23.12 (with slight patches but none
relating to this).


I've read <URL:
http://live.gnome.org/DarrenAlbers/NetworkManagerFAQ#head-f132724b1dcf37edce7ce29df8be355706fd97d5
 >, but I see nothing that applies to me: WEXT is supported and
MadWifi/Atheros is reported to work in general.

-- 
     David A. Madore
    (david.madore at ens.fr,
     http://www.madore.org/~david/ )