WIFI driver roaming in wpa_cli - 'FAIL'

[claudobahn]

@gtxaspec my wifi environment has multiple stations serving the same SSID, allowing clients to roam. I noticed that since switching to the newer wifi drivers a while back, triggering roaming using wpa_cli no longer seems to be possible, all I get is a FAIL. Before the new drivers, issuing a roam <BSSID> in wpa_cli would sort of work, though not always associate successfully.

Wondering if that's a driver feature that's turned off right now?

fyi, in this case talking about the 8189fs driver.

Also tried the following w/ iwconfig, which presumably fails for the same reason (not sure)?

iwconfig wlan0 ap any
Error for wireless request "Set AP Address" (8B14) :
    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Operation not permitted.

[claudobahn]

Interestingly when I use purely command-line, the following sequence currently mostly works for me:

• wpa_cli -i wlan0 scan
• wpa_cli -i wlan0 scan_results
• wpa_cli -i wlan0 roam <BSSID>

Sometimes says OK and ends up re-associating with a completely different BSSID, but at least it doesn't outright fail from the get-go.

Still curious to find out if you have any insight into the general roaming behavior of these cameras, since mine often get stuck on a poorly performing BSSID / channel when a much better option is available.

[gtxaspec]

i'll take a look at the driver

[gtxaspec]

@claudobahn can you enable debugging output (modify the file /opt/wz_mini/etc/init.d/S10kmod and set the log level on the wifi driver: rtw_drv_log_level=5, check the section corresponding to your camera) and see if there is any output in dmesg when you try to do the wpa_cli that fails?

thanks

[claudobahn]

@gtxaspec the roam doesn't cause any additional messages in dmesg, but independent of roam, this repeats over and over:

[ 1202.368957] RTW: unknown vendor specific information element ignored (vendor OUI 00:40:96 len=6)
[ 1202.378037] RTW: unknown vendor specific information element ignored (vendor OUI 00:40:96 len=5)
[ 1202.387103] RTW: unknown vendor specific information element ignored (vendor OUI 00:40:96 len=5)
[ 1202.396184] RTW: unknown vendor specific information element ignored (vendor OUI 00:40:96 len=5)
[ 1202.434412] RTW: IEEE 802.11 element parse ignored unknown element (id=7 elen=6)
[ 1202.442100] RTW: IEEE 802.11 element parse ignored unknown element (id=11 elen=5)
[ 1202.449830] RTW: IEEE 802.11 element parse ignored unknown element (id=32 elen=1)
[ 1202.457737] RTW: IEEE 802.11 element parse ignored unknown element (id=127 elen=6)
[ 1202.465581] RTW: IEEE 802.11 element parse ignored unknown element (id=150 elen=6)

What I did find after some googling is that scanning is required for a successful roam, see my second post above. I do remember you are bypassing scanning in the firmware, I believe? Perhaps the roaming behavior would improve if I enabled that again?

So just to be clear, at least on the 8189fs driver, the following sequence of commands DOES allow me to roam:

wpa_cli -i wlan0 scan
wpa_cli -i wlan0 scan_results
wpa_cli -i wlan0 roam <BSSID>

But the cameras don't seem to roam themselves, they seem to get stuck on crappy access points every now and then.

[claudobahn]

I've done this: mv /opt/wz_mini/bin/iwlist /opt/wz_mini/bin/iwlist.disabled and will see if the cameras behave better. Though "better" will be difficult to quantify :)

[claudobahn]

Hm, never mind, according to your comment, that only impacts the V2. And even thought running iwlist wlan0 scan outputs all the networks in the area, wpa_cli -i wlan0 scan_results only shows the currently connected AP afterwards. Until I run wpa_cli -i wlan0 scan, then doing wpa_cli -i wlan0 scan_results does show other access points / networks.