Need help reproducing a couple of possible bugs in network management

Support & Help Requests
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1

Hi guys

So I’m not stuck with a problem or anything, but the other day I updated my mother’s laptop from Ubuntu MATE 14.04 LTS to Ubuntu MATE 16.04 LTS and I’ve had a few issues during the process to set up the WiFi network connection.

I’m hoping that with your help we could determine:

  • Whether what I experienced are indeed bugs reproducible under a clean Ubuntu MATE 16.04 install
  • If so, the packages responsible for the bugs

If you’re interested please continue reading.

Setup:

  • Two admin accounts: mine and my mother’s.
  • No extreme customization: standard panel layout and standard applets
  • The system was fully up to date. (had used cable network connection to do that)

What I think might be bugs:

Possible bug #1
Confirmed bug #1

Under my personal administrator account (uid 1000):

I’ve tried to connect to a WPA/WPA2 Personal WiFi network broadcasted by her home router. (standard ISP issued router from French ISP Orange)

I clicked the network icon in the top right corner, selected the correct SSID and inputed the 26 characters password made up of uppercase hexadecimal characters (from the set [0-9A-F])

That password is provided by the ISP with each home router and is most likely generated at random but it takes a while to type.

When I finally finished typing it I clicked the ‘OK’ button and got nothing as a result.

I tried a couple more times thinking I made a mistake while typing the password with no luck.

Hypotheses:

1. There is a timeout in the applet. :heavy_check_mark:
2. Some kind of overflow triggers when passwords are too long.

How I solved my immediate problem:

:arrow_right: Went to the Network Connections settings, selected the SSID from the list of WiFi networks, entered the password there in the ‘Wi-Fi Security’ tab and typed ‘save’ before exiting

Possible bug #2

Under my mother’s administrator account:

The network connection was not available despite me having set it up successfully from my personal account.

:arrow_right: This was obviously because under my personal account I had not checked the “All users may connect to this network” checkbox. Though if I might say: since this was another administrator account this is kind of counter-intuitive.

Before realizing that I tried to set it up once again using the Network icon in the top right corner.

This time when I finished entering the password I hit return and the network icon disappeared from the indicators in my top right panel, and the connection was not activated.

I logged out to get the network icon back and tried to input the password again. Upon hitting return the icon disappeared again - still no connection.

tailing -f the logs @ /var/log/kern.log showed that Network-manager or the corresponding applet had crashed (sorry can’t remember which and I’m not in an environment where I can test that anymore)

2

Hi @ouroumov,

I would double check what type of security is required and what you have it set to, have you clicked on WEP instead of WPA/WPA2 Personal?.

As an example:

http://www.linksys.com/ca/support-article?articleNum=139152

3

Hi @wolfman
I’m sure it’s WPA/WPA2 Personal, not WEP.
It’s the router’s stock configuration, the “Network Connections” preference dialog correctly detects WPA/WPA2 Personal and the key works when I enter it in there.

4

I had the exact same problem installing fresh, Ubuntu with Unity and Ubuntu Mate.

I entered the password WPA/WPA2 and the correct SSID and it did nothing. I had also to make the network available for all users and fiddle from the network manager settings to get it work, just like you. Only difference is, it was a fresh install, it happened two times (Unity, Mate) and my icon did not disappear.

For me network manager is definitely buggy, even though only at setting it up for the first time. But it was very frustrating because on the second install I was typing like 10 times the correct password for my network from the nm-applet. The only thing it did, was duplicating the network name entry.

1 Like
5

Hi @ouroumov,

do you have different algorithm’s set?, there is TKIP and AES (I think?). :smiley:

See also:

6

I don’t know and I have no way to check at the moment.
As I said, default configuration for the router.

I don’t think it matters though.
I might not have said it explicitly enough in my first post but I don’t have a problem achieving wireless connectivity. That’s done and the machine is happily browsing the Internet.

The problem is in the management of the connection, specifically in the original connection setup phase.

Bug #1, now partially reproduced thanks to @David_Dusanic is obviously a bug of the Network Manager Applet that comes with the default MATE panel. If someone who knows his way around, like @Wimpy or @lah7 could identify the name of the corresponding package that would be great. :)

This week end I’m gonna bring a new machine at my mother’s place and try and identify whether the bug is because the password is too long, because I take too long to type it, or is just affecting any WPA/WPA2 Personal wireless.

Bug #2, provided someone else is able to reproduce, is probably a collision bug that crashes network-manager when two users try to separately gain access to a network with the same SSID

7

Oddly enough; I must help a friend with a fresh install of UM 16.04 which I did for him yesterday, he took his laptop home but can’t connect via WiFi to his laptop which worked fine in my house, I will let you know if I find anything!. :smiley:

8

Hey that’s great, if you can please take note of:

  • If it’s WPA
  • The password length and characters used
  • If you witness the same behaviour try and copy the password to a text file, then copy paste that password into the dialog so we can check the timeout hypothesis too
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Wilco! :thumbsup: (Will comply with your request!).

1 Like
10

Hi @ouroumov,

WPA2 security.
Password is numerical numbering only.

If you copy from LibreOffice you will get a text (I just typed a few characters) like below with the strange format import so don’t use copy & paste!. :thumbsup:

p { margin-bottom: 0.25cm; line-height: 120%; }

Öjflgjljkäglhjfsäpghjpäsfghäpjfshlkjsfg

äljfgajöfödajkögfjöadljödjködjfk

EDIT: Just for info, my friend was trying to enter the router password and not the WPA2 password, I had it up and running within minutes!. :smiley:

11

Okay, so I have verified that the bug #1 occurs on a fresh install of Ubuntu MATE 16.04 on an ASUS notebook I’m gonna give to my aunt.

Apparently, bug #1 is a timeout issue.
I’ve tried to enter multiple times the password without hurrying to hit the enter key, it had no effect every time: nothing was happening as a result of the dialog.
I had the password copied in a text file and used that to copy / paste into the input box as soon as it was open and what do you know: it worked.

12

Hi @ouroumov,

was it a LibreOffice textfile or something else?. :smiley: I did say that I used LO and not a different text app!. :smiley:

13

hey @wolfman
Nah I used a plain dumb text file (.txt) edited with pluma
Cheers

1 Like
14

So, I’m not sure I did that right but I just filed Bug #1589535 against network-manager-applet package.

If you’re also affected by this and happen to have a launchpad account, please mark yourself as affected using the green link at the top of the page.

Edit: upon request from someone on launchpad I submitted an upstream report:
GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 767321

1 Like
15

So update:
The Canonical team is aware of bug #1 and it looks like there’s gonna be an SRU because this issue affects a lot of flavors as well as proper Ubuntu and even Ubuntu Touch.

https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=767321#c31

1 Like