[pkg-wpa-devel] Bug#678327: wpa_cli: new 'blacklist BSSID' always returns FAIL

[Ben Armstrong]

Package: wpasupplicant
Version: 1.0-2
Severity: normal

I was excited to see in the changelog that 1.0 adds a 'blacklist BSSID'
command, something I've long wanted for congested areas where I am
accepting connections for any open network with any ESSID, but many
are not free and therefore not suitable for my purposes.

Oddly enough, every time I use it, wpa_cli is answering FAIL, yet when
I examine the blacklist with 'blacklist' the entry is shown. Also, if I
bump up the log level to DEBUG, I see suitable messages in syslog, e.g.
(actual BSSID obscured for privacy):

Jun 20 17:28:30 shade wpa_supplicant[30271]: CTRL_IFACE: BLACKLIST bssid='00:11:22:dd:ee:ff'
Jun 20 17:28:30 shade wpa_supplicant[30271]: Added BSSID 00:11:22:dd:ee:ff into blacklist

Here is the wpa_cli input and output associated with these messages:

> blacklist 00:13:a3:0f:63:43
FAIL
> blacklist
00:13:a3:0f:63:43

Because of the FAIL response, I don't have the confidence the blacklist
will actually do its job.

I searched documentation, and not finding any but the briefest mention
of the new command in the changelog and the help within wpa_cli itself,
then the source, but I ran out of time and patience trying to discover
the reason for the failure on my own.

Ben

-- System Information:
Debian Release: wheezy/sid
  APT prefers unstable
  APT policy: (800, 'unstable'), (1, 'experimental')
Architecture: amd64 (x86_64)

Kernel: Linux 3.2.0-2-amd64 (SMP w/2 CPU cores)
Locale: LANG=en_CA.UTF-8, LC_CTYPE=en_CA.UTF-8 (charmap=UTF-8)
Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash

Versions of packages wpasupplicant depends on:
ii  adduser           3.113+nmu3
ii  initscripts       2.88dsf-27
ii  libc6             2.13-33
ii  libdbus-1-3       1.6.0-1
ii  libnl-3-200       3.2.7-3
ii  libnl-genl-3-200  3.2.7-3
ii  libpcsclite1      1.8.3-3
ii  libssl1.0.0       1.0.1c-3
ii  lsb-base          4.1+Debian7

wpasupplicant recommends no packages.

Versions of packages wpasupplicant suggests:
pn  libengine-pkcs11-openssl  <none>
pn  wpagui                    <none>

-- no debconf information