[Solved]wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd OK, but no wifi connection

Jmi · n00b Joined: 12 Feb 2023 Posts: 3

Hi,

I am new to gentoo (1 month ago), but it is a long time since I am on another source based distribution (Lunar).

Everything waas fine after installation and after first update. But after my last update, wifi does not work anymore. Here is what i could understand so far :

1) the status of wpa_supplicant told me that their was a problem with one of the line of /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf. Very strange since it is the same file since the installation, and it seems that there was no version update in wpa_supplicant since my installation. So why this problem suddnely?
2) After fixing wpa_supplicant.conf, the service is started correctly (wpa_supplicant@wlp4s0 too)
3) dhcpcd service is ok
4) juste after booting, the status of dhcpcd tells me that it has a carrier for wlp4s0, then it losts it. Why!?
5) if I do a "dhcpcd wlp4s0", the status of dhcpcd has a line "control_free: No such file or directory". I didn't find any info about it on google.
6) evrything is ok with ethernet, so dhcpcd seems ok
7) everything is ok on another distribution, so the hardware is ok
8 ) If I share my phone connection, I can connect on the wifi of my phone !? (wtf!?)
9) I checked my box paramters (that really didn't change since long time ago), and my MAC adresse is listed in the authorized list.

So I really dp not understand what happened after this upgrade? Is someone can help?

Here is the output of journalctl (only network related lines)

sublogic · Posted: Tue Feb 14, 2023 3:39 am Post subject:

Maybe: try re-emerging wpa_supplicant with USE=tkip. Create a file /etc/portage/package.use/wpa_supplicant with content:

Jmi · n00b Joined: 12 Feb 2023 Posts: 3

Great, you were right.

I don't know what hapened. Certainly, the first time, I was not familiar with USE flags and I certainly used it on the command line. So I suppose there had a re-emerge during the update process.

That lead me to a question :
How can I know the history of emerge/unmerge in general (what was emerged/unmerged and when) and for a package in particular (which version, with which USE flag and when was merged/unmerged)? I can't find it in emerge or equery man pages.

[EDIT]
Ok, I found the answer to my question : genlop (and qlop) even if it does not give the history of USE flags. So it confirms that wpa_supplicant was re-emerged during the update (why? It will stay a mistery)
[/EDIT]

Thanks for the help on wpa_supplicant!

sublogic · Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2023 3:44 am Post subject:

Great.

You have an old router that uses TKIP, a deprecated (and vulnerable) part of the protocol. The wpa_supplicant USE flag for it was turned off about a year ago. Your cell phone is more recent and doesn't use TKIP, so wpa_supplicant works fine with it. If you can't upgrade the router, USE=tkip is a band-aid for wpa_supplicant.

What I don't understand is why the flag was on after your first update. One of life's little mysteries I guess.

Jmi · n00b Joined: 12 Feb 2023 Posts: 3

Thanks to you I changed the parameters of my box.
Two years old is not so old, so I checked and saw that I have three choices : TKIP ; AES ; TKIP+AES. I chose TKIP+AES thinking it was the best choice, but no matter how I configure the wpa_supplicant.conf file (proto=RSN, group=CCMP), it need to be emerged with tkip USE flag. So I changed the parameter to "AES" only, and now it works wothout the tkip USE flag.