wpa2-psk with aes on a broadcom wlan0 (2.6.24)

Update: I managed to find out why the wpa_action stuff was needed. Please ignore the lines written like this; they are there just for reference.

One more update: it seems that the firmware needs to be in sync. I ended up using the wireless-2.6 kernel from the everything branch.

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I just managed to get my wlan from my laptop to work with WPA2-PSK with AES with the free Broadcom driver (now named b43, formerly bcm43xx).

0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI (rev 01)

0b:00.0 0280: 14e4:4311 (rev 01)

In order to do this I needed linux 2.6.24-1 from unstable and the b43 driver.

bounty:/home/eddy# lsmod | grep b43
b43                   119976  0
rfkill                 12816  3 rfkill_input,b43
mac80211              132236  1 b43
led_class              10120  1 b43
input_polldev           9872  1 b43
ssb                    39428  2 b43,b44
pcmcia                 45720  2 b43,ssb
pcmcia_core            46500  2 b43,pcmcia
firmware_class         15232  2 b43,pcmcia

The final trick was to convince wpasupplicat to reload the config with:

bounty:/home/eddy# wpa_action wlan0 reload
wpa_action: reloading wpa_supplicant configuration file via HUP signal

This is the wpasupplicant.conf file that I used:

bounty:/home/eddy# cat /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpasupplicant.conf | grep -v '^\s*#' | sed 's/psk=.*/psk=aaabbb___ENCRIPTED_SEE_wpa_password___cccddd/'
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ap_scan=1
network={
ssid="toblerone"
scan_ssid=1
proto=RSN
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
pairwise=CCMP
group=CCMP
psk=aaabbb___ENCRIPTED_SEE_wpa_password___cccddd
}

and this is the relevant interfaces area:

auto wlan0
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-driver wext
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpasupplicant.conf
wpa-ap-scan 2

This is what it looks like when is working:

bounty:/home/eddy# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"toblerone"
Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:1B:FC:45:33:70
Bit Rate=48 Mb/s   Tx-Power=27 dBm
Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2346 B
Encryption key:1337-0000-C121-d73D-0207-RE41-0000-3210 [2]
Link Quality=98/100  Signal level=-36 dBm  Noise level=-68 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

And here's the result of a scan (relevant section):

  Cell 02 - Address: 00:1B:FC:45:33:70
ESSID:"toblerone"
Mode:Master
Channel:1
Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
Quality=93/100  Signal level=-42 dBm  Noise level=-68 dBm
Encryption key:on
IE: IEEE 802.11i/WPA2 Version 1
   Group Cipher : CCMP
   Pairwise Ciphers (1) : CCMP
   Authentication Suites (1) : PSK
Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
         24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s; 6 Mb/s; 9 Mb/s
         12 Mb/s; 48 Mb/s
Extra:tsf=0000000072ff542d

and here is proof it works:

bounty:/home/eddy# route -n
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask         Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.77.0    0.0.0.0         255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 wlan0
0.0.0.0         192.168.77.254  0.0.0.0         UG    0      0        0 wlan0

bounty:/home/eddy# ping debian.org
PING debian.org (192.25.206.10) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from gluck.debian.org (192.25.206.10): icmp_seq=1 ttl=36 time=201 ms
64 bytes from gluck.debian.org (192.25.206.10): icmp_seq=2 ttl=36 time=199 ms
64 bytes from gluck.debian.org (192.25.206.10): icmp_seq=3 ttl=36 time=200 ms

--- debian.org ping statistics ---
3 packets transmitted, 3 received, 0% packet loss, time 1999ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 199.691/200.519/201.046/0.786 ms

Woooohooo! :-)

Thanks to all people involved in b43 development and all the ones made this possible (Debian developers).

Posted from bed, via wlan.

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Update: You need the firmware blob, which can be extracted from a Windows driver with bcm43xx-fwcutter (now called b43-fwcutter); I already had it from my previous attempts to configure wlan with bcm43xx. I am not sure if I should use the new tool. You really need the firmware and driver to be in sync.

Update: it seems the b43 driver page (the entire linuxwireless.org site) went down sometime yesterday evening, since yesterday afternoon I was browsing through the site without any issues. (Note: I live in Europe, for reference)