[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#836351: new mac address randomization breaks r8723au

[Joey Hess]

Package: network-manager
Version: 1.4.0-3
Severity: normal

My Lenovo Yoga laptop uses the r8723au kernel driver. This driver is low
quality, and one of its bugs is that when asked to change the mac
address, the system call succeeds, but the address is not actually
changed (see #774898):

root at darkstar:~>macchanger -r wlan0 
Current MAC:   <omitted> (Liteon Technology Corporation)
Permanent MAC: <same^^^> (Liteon Technology Corporation)
New MAC:       2e:ba:07:b6:bd:3e (unknown)
Network driver didn't actually change to the new MAC!!

Apparently this behavior causes a bad interaction with network-manager's new
mac address randomization.

When wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=yes, network-manager fails to scan for wifi
networks. The UI has no indication of a problem, other than no networks are
listed. The log shows:

Sep 01 22:16:03 darkstar kernel: IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
Sep 01 22:16:03 darkstar wpa_supplicant[5360]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-REGDOM-CHANGE init=CORE type=WORLD
Sep 01 22:16:03 darkstar NetworkManager[9700]: <info>  [1472782563.1695] device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: disabled -> disconnected
Sep 01 22:16:04 darkstar NetworkManager[9700]: <info>  [1472782564.4725] device (wlan0): supplicant interface state: disconnected -> inactive
Sep 01 22:16:04 darkstar NetworkManager[9700]: <warn>  [1472782564.4767] device (wlan0): set-hw-addr: new MAC address 56:61:92:36:E5:54 not successfully set to set (scanning)
Sep 01 22:16:04 darkstar kernel: IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlan0: link is not ready
Sep 01 22:16:04 darkstar wpa_supplicant[5360]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-REGDOM-CHANGE init=CORE type=WORLD

When wifi.scan-rand-mac-address=no, and wifi.cloned-mac-address=random, it
finds networks, but fails to connect, displaying a dialog box with a error
message that threatens to summon the dark elder gods of bad error messages:

	           Failed to add/activate connection
	(2) Active connection removed before it was initialized

Log:

Sep 01 22:17:50 darkstar NetworkManager[10288]: <info>  [1472782670.0328] manager: NetworkManager state is now CONNECTING
Sep 01 22:17:50 darkstar NetworkManager[10288]: <warn>  [1472782670.0338] device (wlan0): set-hw-addr: new MAC address E2:14:61:DC:AA:08 not successfully set to set-cloned (random)
Sep 01 22:17:50 darkstar NetworkManager[10288]: <info>  [1472782670.0340] device (wlan0): state change: prepare -> failed (reason 'none') [40 120 0]
Sep 01 22:17:50 darkstar NetworkManager[10288]: <info>  [1472782670.0343] manager: NetworkManager state is now DISCONNECTED

Hopefully the r8723au staging driver is going away soon and the new
driver will be better. But, it seems network-manager could better deal with
a failure to randomize the MAC, in its behavior and/or UI.

Note that, since known network connections made before upgrading have
randomization disabled, this bug will mostly affect connecting to new
networks some time after upgrading. I think that my earlier bug #818428
was due to experiencing that while traveling, after the scanning MAC
randomization was first added to network-manager.

-- System Information:
Debian Release: stretch/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable'), (500, 'testing'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)
Foreign Architectures: i386

Kernel: Linux 4.7.0-1-amd64 (SMP w/4 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8, LC_CTYPE=en_US.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash
Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system)

Versions of packages network-manager depends on:
ii  adduser                3.115
ii  dbus                   1.10.10-1
ii  init-system-helpers    1.42
ii  libaudit1              1:2.6.6-1
ii  libbluetooth3          5.36-1+b2
ii  libc6                  2.23-5
ii  libglib2.0-0           2.49.6-1
ii  libgnutls30            3.5.3-3
ii  libgudev-1.0-0         230-3
ii  libmm-glib0            1.6.0-1
ii  libndp0                1.6-1
ii  libnewt0.52            0.52.18-3
ii  libnl-3-200            3.2.27-1
ii  libnm0                 1.4.0-3
ii  libpam-systemd         231-5
ii  libpolkit-agent-1-0    0.105-16
ii  libpolkit-gobject-1-0  0.105-16
ii  libreadline6           6.3-8+b4
ii  libselinux1            2.5-3
ii  libsoup2.4-1           2.54.1-1
ii  libsystemd0            231-5
ii  libteamdctl0           1.26-1
ii  libuuid1               2.28.1-1
ii  lsb-base               9.20160629
ii  policykit-1            0.105-16
ii  udev                   231-5
ii  wpasupplicant          2.5-2+v2.4-2

Versions of packages network-manager recommends:
ii  crda             3.13-1+b1
pn  dnsmasq-base     <none>
ii  iptables         1.6.0-3
pn  iputils-arping   <none>
ii  isc-dhcp-client  4.3.4-1
pn  modemmanager     <none>
ii  ppp              2.4.7-1+3

Versions of packages network-manager suggests:
pn  libteam-utils  <none>

-- 
see shy jo
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