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gnome-nettool package

wpa_supplicant not working with bonding/ifenslave

Asked by Kim Tyler

wpa_supplicant works perfectly with wlan0 using WPA or WPA2. When used with (or without) wpa_supplicant option "-b bond0" in a bonded interface, wpa_supplicant fails with "WPA: EAPOL-Key Replay Counter did not increase - dropping packet", and there is no more traffic. The network traffic can be seen, but the interface does not respond.
ifenslave is using only the wireless connection :- ifenslave bond0 wlan0

Since wpa_supplicant is working perfectly with network card and wireless router without bonding, the problem has to be with linux somehere, wpa_supplicant, the wireless card driver, the bonding module or the ifenslave application

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Kim Tyler (ktyler) said : 		#1

I have borrowed a Gigabyte GN-WB01GS USB wireless adapter which uses the rt73usb module, as well as the rt2x00usb, rt2x00lib modules. The inbuilt wireless card is 00:0a.0 0280: 1814:0201 (rev 01) RaLink RT2500 802.11g Cardbus/mini-PCI (rev 01).

The command "wpa_supplicant -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant_wpa2.conf -iwlan0 -bbond0" does not work (rt2500 card) as noted above, but,
the command "wpa_supplicant -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant_wpa2.conf -iwlan1 -bbond0" DOES work perfectly (as advertised) for the Gigabyte wireless USB card.

The only thing different is either the card (but the rt2500 works without bonding) or the rt2500pci kernel module.

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Kim Tyler (ktyler) said : 		#2

The question is :- what can I do about it? If have put in bug report with launchpad and linked it to this question. I have put in a bug report with serialmonkey which originally wrote the driver.
I have scanned the forums and not found anything useful with this problem.

Is anybody out there? Or is this another bit bucket for user problems.

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Kim Tyler (ktyler) said : 		#3

This is now fixed in the latest 2.6.32 rc1 kernel (see http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v2.6.32-rc1/ ) and linked bug report.

The problem was in the rt2500pci.c code, related to timeouts, and also causes wireless rates to be at slow speeds.

Still haven't received any contact, so I'm assuming I'm wasting my time following this up, but I've done it for completeness

I'm assuming a final fix in lucid, but a workaround for bonding using the rt2500pci module is to use the new kernel (as above) or recompile the modules from rt2xxx directory in a current system.