misc/169199: Cannot set up static ip addresses for wireless with wpa encryption

[Don Allen]

>Number:         169199
>Category:       misc
>Synopsis:       Cannot set up static ip addresses for wireless with wpa encryption
>Confidential:   no
>Severity:       serious
>Priority:       medium
>Responsible:    freebsd-bugs
>State:          open
>Quarter:        
>Keywords:       
>Date-Required:
>Class:          sw-bug
>Submitter-Id:   current-users
>Arrival-Date:   Mon Jun 18 14:00:22 UTC 2012
>Closed-Date:
>Last-Modified:
>Originator:     Don Allen
>Release:        9.0
>Organization:
>Environment:
FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE FreeBSD 9.0-RELEASE #0: Tue Jan 3 07:15:25 UTC 2012 root at obrian.cse.buffalo.edu:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/GENERIC  i386
>Description:
During installation of 9.0 on a Thinkpad G41 with an Atheros-based pcmcia wireless card, I ran into trouble trying to set up wireless networking. I have multiple machines behind a NAT router and I want static IP addresses that I can stick in /etc/hosts so, for example, I can ssh from one to the other, rsync my home directory, etc. The installer found my base station just fine, accepted the wpa pass key and then asked if I wanted to do IPV4 setup. Yes. DHCP or static? Static, please. I then entered the IP address, netmask, and gateway address and clicked 'ok'. I immediately ended up back at the page that gives you a choice of network interfaces to configure. It did not proceed, as the Handbook suggests and as one would expect, to collect addresses of DNS servers and ask if I wanted to do IPV6 configuration. I have done this multiple times to no avail. The information I entered was correct. And if it was not, I would expect an error message, which I did not get. If I just click 'cancel
 ' when it mysteriously loops back, I can proceed with the rest of the install, but none of the static IP setup info makes it into /etc/rc.conf or anywhere else.

My wireless base station does allow you to configure its DHCP server to assign IP addresses based on MAC address, so the address assigned to a particular machine is predictable. I prefer using static IP addresses because it avoids the handshake time with the DHCP server every time you boot. But in this case, I was unable to get static IP address assignment working, so I resorted to DHCP, which did work.

I do not know if this problem is wireless-specific or wpa-specific; I can only speak about my own specific case.

I will not be able to do anything further with this machine on this problem, as I abandoned the install of FreeBSD -- just too many problems during installation.

>How-To-Repeat:
Do install as described above.
>Fix:


>Release-Note:
>Audit-Trail:
>Unformatted: