Obsolete authenthication requests for WiFi

Bug #1633413 reported by dronus
36
This bug affects 6 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
network-manager (Ubuntu)
Confirmed
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

When a WiFi connection behaves unstable over longer time (eg. long range), sometimes the user is asked for the password again (the requester come up already filled), even if it is correct. The request can come up at any time, depending on the connection quality, and likely force the user to look up the already correctly entered password again.

This is very annoying for kiosk-like systems or when using fullscreen apps.

This bug is stone old and iv'e seens this year by year over a broad range of Ubuntu versions as well devices (Intel and ARM platform). It still happens as of Ubuntu 16.04.

So I wonder if this is inevitable by the fact that NetworkManager sometimes can't decide between an authetication failed by wrong password vs. authentication failed by bad connection. If not, it should finally be fixed.

There may be a security problem, for locked down kiosk applications, as the password may be obtained by kiosk users if the request pops up.

Revision history for this message
Launchpad Janitor (janitor) wrote :

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

Changed in network-manager (Ubuntu):
status: New → Confirmed
Revision history for this message
Philipp Wendler (philw85) wrote :

I agree that this is very inconvenient. For example, I have a system at home that I leave unattended but I need it to reconnect automatically to my wifi, because I need to access it from abroad. If there is a disconnect and it can't reconnect immediately (e.g., because of a router reboot), the password dialog will prevent network manager from connecting to my wifi again, effectively killing my access to this machine.

So I would say that even if network manager needs to ask for the password because it can't know whether the password is correct, this should not block all other operations: network manager should try connecting to the wifi in the background (and if it succeeds, hide the dialog).

This is also asked here: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=680625
Maybe https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/1407907, https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager/+bug/1316634 and https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/network-manager-applet/+bug/1010745 are related?
Users have requesting this since 2010: http://askubuntu.com/q/19137/51272

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