[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Bug#434527: Bug#434527: NetworkManager won't associate when using madwifi

[Michael Biebl]

reassign 434527 madwifi-source
retitle 434527 madwifi should provide complete wext support
thanks

Tim Hull schrieb:
> Package: network-manager
> Version: 0.6.4-8

Hi Tim!

> 
> When using a madwifi-based wireless card (with driver built from
> madwifi-source 0.9.3-3 in sid), it is currently impossible to associate to
> any access point using NetworkManager.  NetworkManager will see the access
> points, but upon attempting to associate, the lights in nm-applet never
> turn
> green and it eventually gives up.  The card works fine when configured
> manually (without using NetworkManager). My system is an up-to-date Debian

With manually configured, I guess you use wpa_supplicant with -Dmadwifi?

> sid/i386 installation using kernel 2.6.22-1 (from sid) and libc6 2.6-3.
> 
> This seems somewhat related to the wpa_supplicant settings used by
> network-manager, as Ubuntu's network-manager has patches which specifically
> use wpa_supplicant's "madwifi" driver as opposed to its "wext" driver.
> 
> In Ubuntu's case, NetworkManager works flawlessly on the same machine, and
> installing the Ubuntu network-manager package makes it work on Debian
> (though that setup has other difficulties due to the problems mixing
> Debian/Ubuntu packages).
> 
> Could a fix such as the one used in Ubuntu's case be investigated? The
> patch
> is part of the (big) network-manager patch on patches.ubuntu.com.  This
> issue is somewhat of a show-stopper in my case...
> 

I'm reluctant to add patches to NM to workaround broken drivers. Imho it
doesn't help in the long run. A much better solution is, to fix the
drivers to conform to the wext spec (or in the future to mac80211), I'm
thus reassigning it to madwifi-source. Please assisst the developers
with your input as good as you can to fix this issue.
If we don't push the driver writers, nothing will change. So a strong
position is necessary imho, even if that means some inconveniences in
the mean time for the users.
I know this is unfortunate for your case, and I apologize for that.


Cheers,
Michael

-- 
Why is it that all of the instruments seeking intelligent life in the
universe are pointed away from Earth?

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