WPA_SUPPLICANT on OLPC not connecting to HOSTAPD on Raspberry Pi

Corey McGuire coreyfro at coreyfro.com
Thu Mar 16 10:48:56 PDT 2017 

Hello Libertas List,

I am continuing to track down an issue I am having with the OLPC XO1.

I am working to modernize an OS for the XO1 in an attempt to turn it
in to a daylight readable IDE for S.T.E.A.M. Education.  I,
effectively, wish to bring kids outside to build and program robots
with natural obstacles and in the fresh air.

I am an embedded Linux developer, so I am no stranger to squishing
these bugs, but I am hung up on the one, final issue.

I have an extensive email I have sent to the HOSTAPD and
WPA_SUPPLICANT list, and it is included below the following reply from
Jouni who sent me this way (after confirming my suspicions, but I
wanted to rule out high level remedies before I began asking for help
on legacy hardware.)

But first I will post some key elements from the email, below.

1. The OLPC connects using the default OS to WPA networks
2. The OLPC connects using the modern Debian Jessie OS to unencrypted networks
3. The RPi running Rasbian has no trouble accepting other clients
4. The RPi hostapd debug gives NO statuses when OLPC attempts connections
5. I have tried the precompiled OEM (laptop.org) kernel, and have
compiled 3.10 and 4.8 kernels from the OLPC XO GIT repos and all fail
in the exact same way under Debian Jessie
6. I have tried driver firmwares from laptop.org, from Debian Jessie,
and other sources.
7. I have instructions of how to build a Debian Jessie Distro for the
OLPC XO1 which should 100% repeat the exact image, let alone the
failure.
    i. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LrKfiRNY_-K5tDGRWopfX6hXTlrvxW79jKJo1iquMl0

Please consider Jouni's reply and my previous e-mail, below.

Thank you very much for maintaining this driver for legacy hardware.

-c

On Wed, Mar 8, 2017 at 5:50 AM, Jouni Malinen <j at w1.fi> wrote:
>
> On Tue, Mar 07, 2017 at 03:25:29PM -0800, Corey McGuire wrote:
> > When I watch the OLPC XO attempt to connect to HOSTAPD, I see nothing.
> > Not a peep from HOSTAPD.  Again, I suspect HOSTAPD and the RPi are
> > fine, but I am writing exhaustively for everyone's sake.
>
> > Moving on to the guest system, OLPC XO Running Debian Jessie.
>
> > Below is my attempt to connect to the Raspberry Pi running HOSTAPD from above.
> >
> >       http://pastebin.com/wDwsW8Az
>
> This log shows wpa_supplicant requesting a connection with the AP and
> the WLAN driver accepting that request. That is then followed by event
> message from the driver indicating that the connection failed and the
> status code for the failure being 16 (authentication timeout).
>
> Since you don't see anything in the hostapd debug log at this point, the
> issue is most likely somewhere in the WLAN drivers on either the AP or
> station side. In other words, either the station driver does not even
> manage to send out authentication or association request frame to the AP
> or the AP driver is rejecting that frame without notifying hostapd of
> that. One would need to figure out how to get debug output from the
> drivers and/or use a wireless sniffer to verify what frames are
> exchanged between the devices. Neither hostapd nor wpa_supplicant can do
> much about this since the failure seems to be happening at lower layers
> in the stack.
>
> --
> Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA

------Original Message------

Hey all!

I am new to the list so please let me know if I am using it improperly.

I am a contributor to the on going OLPC XO project and I am working on
a S.T.E.A.M. Education project where the XO running a modern version
of Debian is an IDE for robotics on a Raspberry Pi 3.

I currently have HOSTAPD working on the RPI and I am 99.9% sure it is
working fine.  Most clients log in with no trouble at all.  I watch
the statuses in HOSTAPD for each connection and everything looks
optimal.

When I watch the OLPC XO attempt to connect to HOSTAPD, I see nothing.
Not a peep from HOSTAPD.  Again, I suspect HOSTAPD and the RPi are
fine, but I am writing exhaustively for everyone's sake.  I have
included the output of HOSTAPD, here which includes 1. Start up, 2. My
laptop connecting, 3. The XO SUCCESSFULLY connecting from 'Sugar' (the
default, RH OS), 4. The sound of silence as the XO attempts to connect
from a modern copy of Debian:

HOSTAPD statuses
      http://pastebin.com/02hGAgEd

Here's the config of the HOSTAPD:

      interface=wlan0
      driver=nl80211
      ssid=xorobo
      hw_mode=g
      channel=6
      ieee80211n=1
      wmm_enabled=1
      ht_capab=[HT40][SHORT-GI-20][DSSS_CCK-40]
      macaddr_acl=0
      auth_algs=1
      ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
      wpa=2
      wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
      wpa_passphrase=rpixorobo
      rsn_pairwise=CCMP


Moving on to the guest system, OLPC XO Running Debian Jessie.  As I
said, before, under sugar, I can connect.  I have any number of
reasons to get away from this old build, though.

I have built a thoroughly modern version of debian for the XO.
Compared to the performance of Sugar, it is night and day.  However,
except for a few unencrypted networks, I have been unable to connect
my XO to anything.

Below is my attempt to connect to the Raspberry Pi running HOSTAPD from above.

      http://pastebin.com/wDwsW8Az

Here are the configs.  The passphrases aren't really a concern of
mine.  Feel free to log in to my robot if you see it driving around
;-)  Just don't drive it under a truck.


WPA_SUPPLICANT.CONF
      # reading passphrase from stdin
      network={
         ssid="xorobo"
         #psk="rpixorobo"
          psk=babbfca5090e36c4d9919ef90fb099ec50f3c6830ab9f4959f2746f7e9b0ba99
      }


/etc/network/INTERFACES
      auto wlan0
      iface wlan0 inet manual
         wpa-driver nl80211
         address 192.168.128.2
         netmask 255.255.255.252
         wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

UNAME -A
      Linux olpc-deb-master 4.5.0-263497-gea093ed #1 PREEMPT Sun Feb
26 06:17:05 UTC 2017 i586 GNU/Linux

LSMOD
      Module                  Size  Used by
      uinput                  5799  1
      usb8xxx                10343  0
      libertas               78445  1 usb8xxx
      input_leds              2094  0
      led_class               2643  1 input_leds
      serio_raw               3233  0

DMESG
      http://pastebin.com/2q5nAGWb

And for the overly inquisitive, here's how I build the OS
      https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LrKfiRNY_-K5tDGRWopfX6hXTlrvxW79jKJo1iquMl0

Please let me know if there is anything else you need.

Thank you!

More information about the libertas-dev mailing list