I normally run Arch, which is pretty much always on the latest versions of everything. When I installed, I installed NetworkManager to handle network connections - seemed the simplest option at the time, though I'm not terribly fond of NM.
When I got the E586, I copied down the SSID name and WPA passphrase, booted the laptop and tried to connect. Over and over again - after much grinding, NM would come back to a prompt for the passphrase. Never did connect.
Thinking the device might be faulty, I thought I'd better try it under something else before I started complaining. So I rebooted to SolydX (Debian testing based), which uses Wicd instead of NM. It became obvious that the problem was not with the device - I very quickly got a connection and was able to get on the net.
Thinking that NM had a problem, I went back to Arch and installed Wicd on it. Disabled NM and tried again. And got exactly the same sort of problem - tried for a long time, then failed. Checking the wicd log, this is what I'm getting:
- Code: Select all
2013/06/07 21:46:15 :: Generating psk...
2013/06/07 21:46:15 :: Attempting to authenticate...
2013/06/07 21:46:18 :: wpa_supplicant rescan forced...
2013/06/07 21:46:55 :: wpa_supplicant authentication may have failed.
2013/06/07 21:46:55 :: connect result is failed
2013/06/07 21:46:55 :: exiting connection thread
2013/06/07 21:46:56 :: Sending connection attempt result bad_pass
I thought I might not have the Wicd install properly set up (I still find systemd less than intuitive the configure), so I dug out the older 3g wireless router (T-Mobile Pointer, which is a Huawei E583c). It connects without problems. Argh!
So far, it seems that the problem is not in the network manager, but looks as though it is in the authentication layer (wpa_supplicant). But I have no idea why it affects some versions and not others, and no idea how to troubleshoot it.
I've got a number of different distros installed on my laptop - SalineOS 1.7 and 2.0dev, Salix 14.0, Arch, SolydX and Xubuntu 13.04. Of these, I can connect to the E586 with everything except Arch and Xubuntu (which are probably the most up-to-date distros on the machine). So I'm coming to the conclusion that the E586 doesn't like something in the most recent versions of wpa_supplicant. But I have no clue as to how to find it or fix it.
While I can use the older 3g wirless router for a while, its performance isn't as good as the new one, which also seems to have better battery life as well, so I'd really rather fix the problem and be able to use the E586.
Any clues would be most appreciated. I wondered if I need to produce something special in the way of a wpa_supplicant.conf, but don't know where to start....
Oh, and to add insult to injury, Vista (which I've not run for several months) was also able to connect to the E586 without any problems.
Paul.