[pkg-wpa-devel] Bug#367655: wpasupplicant: ESSID not set by "wpa-ssid" setting

[Christoph Haas]

Package: wpasupplicant
Version: 0.4.8-4
Severity: normal

It appears like the ESSID is not set properly when the interface comes up.
The if-pre-up.d/wpasupplicant script seems to run:

/sbin/wpa_cli -p /var/run/wpa_supplicant -i eth1 set_network 0 ssid '"foobar"'

When doing a "list" in the wpa_cli I get:

network id / ssid / bssid / flags
0       foobar    any     [CURRENT]

Still when running "iwconfig" I can see that the ESSID is not set to "foobar".
Perhaps the wpa_cli just sets a bunch of parameter for a WLAN with the
ESSID "foobar" - but doesn't actually assign that ESSID to the interface.

My current workaround: adding a "wireless-essid foobar" to the interface
definition like:

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet static
 address ...
 netmask ...
 gateway ...
 dns-nameservers ...
 dns-search ...
 wireless-essid foobar
 wpa-ssid foobar
 wpa-key-mgmt WPA-PSK
 wpa-proto WPA
 wpa-driver wext
 wpa-passphrase toomanysecrets

Maybe this is supposed to work like that and it's indeed not the
wpasupplicant's job to set the ESSID. In that case I would like to propose
that the README.modes makes that clear. It reads:

 wpa-ssid:            sets the essid of your network

And to be exact it doesn't set it.

 Christoph


-- System Information:
Debian Release: testing/unstable
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (500, 'unstable')
Architecture: i386 (i686)
Shell:  /bin/sh linked to /bin/bash
Kernel: Linux 2.6.15-1-486
Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=de_DE.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8) (ignored: LC_ALL set to de_DE.UTF-8)

Versions of packages wpasupplicant depends on:
ii  libc6                         2.3.6-7    GNU C Library: Shared libraries
ii  libncurses5                   5.5-2      Shared libraries for terminal hand
ii  libreadline5                  5.1-7      GNU readline and history libraries
ii  libssl0.9.8                   0.9.8b-2   SSL shared libraries

wpasupplicant recommends no packages.

-- no debconf information