FS#31615 - [netcfg] Wlan essid with apostrophe not working; hexadecimal ssid problem

Attached to Project: Arch Linux
Opened by Daniel Lublin (quite) - Thursday, 20 September 2012, 10:09 GMT
Last edited by Jouke Witteveen (jouke) - Thursday, 27 September 2012, 15:40 GMT
Task Type Bug Report
Category Packages: Core
Status Closed
Assigned To Jouke Witteveen (jouke)
Architecture All
Severity Medium
Priority Normal
Reported Version
Due in Version Undecided
Due Date Undecided
Percent Complete 100%
Votes 0
Private No

Details

I cannot connect to a wlan that has an apostrophe (') in its
ESSID. According to netcfg-profiles(5) I should be able to set
ESSID_TYPE='hex' and put the hexadecimal SSID in ESSID. This
should then be propagated to the wpa_supplicant configuration.

I think this DOES happen, but it ends up as ssid=hexSSID in
the generated wpa_supplicant config. But wpa_supplicant needs
it to be bssid=he:xa:de:ci:ma:l. This is also not documented
in wpa_supplicant.conf(5), but perhaps elsewhere...

I short: ESSID with apostrophe just doesn't work. And I cannot
properly get a hex SSID through to wpa_supplicant. I had to
type my own config for wpa_supplicant (like below), start
it manually, and then run dhcpcd.

ctrl_interface=/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=wheel
network={
bssid=fa:9e:3f:16:13:d3
proto=RSN WPA
psk="annaanna"
id_str="anna"
}

This is all using the standard Arch netcfg tools.

Sorry for very broad bug report, perhaps it needs to be
split up on different components/packages.
This task depends upon

Closed by  Jouke Witteveen (jouke)
Thursday, 27 September 2012, 15:40 GMT
Reason for closing:  Not a bug
Comment by Jouke Witteveen (jouke) - Friday, 21 September 2012, 08:21 GMT
There is no problem in using an ESSID with an apostrophe in it. Do one of
ESSID=foo\'bar
ESSID="foo'bar"
or any of the countless other possibilities.
You can also use a hexadecimal SSID, but in that case you need to spell out the hexadecimal string yourself.
Comment by Daniel Lublin (quite) - Wednesday, 26 September 2012, 04:14 GMT
  • Field changed: Percent Complete (100% → 0%)
Did you read through my report?
I did not work, failed to associate. And then I ended up trying to get the hex ssid through, which didn't work as documented (and wpa_supplicant wasn't documented at all from what I could see, but maybe that's upstream issue)
Comment by Jouke Witteveen (jouke) - Wednesday, 26 September 2012, 07:47 GMT
Your report suggests a misunderstanding of the syntax of shell configuration files and a misunderstanding of the netcfg documentation. Read my suggested quoting for SSID's apostrophes and note that netcfg is *not* supposed to convert an SSID to a hex string.

I will re-close this report tomorrow, unless you post some detailed reproduce outline and (excerpts of) your configuration files.
Comment by Daniel Lublin (quite) - Wednesday, 26 September 2012, 08:39 GMT
About the apostrophe and quoting, you may be right. I cannot try again now, since that network is not within reach.

Concerning the other issue, I see now that I must have been confused. I thought that ESSID_TYPE='hex' would imply that I wanted to connect to the network by hexadecimal mac address--but rather it is a way to specify the name in hex. So of course ESSID always is the name of the network, and what I should have used was the AP option for setting the BSSID. Sorry.

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