Authentication timed out, RTL8xxxu

[fpp]

I'm working on a small ARMv5 notebook from 10 years ago. It has the WonderMedia WM8650 cpu, running at 600MHz. My idea here is to make it run a very lightweight Linux with a very basic but useful GUI and nothing else. Its pretty useless for most use cases, but I wanted to "have it working", and the default OS (android 2.2) cant accomplish that task. All of the resources and needed files to compile the kernel, get a basic system and boot it, are taken from the kernel development git, and a custom script that automates the creation of the kernel/boot partition, and rootfs.
I have to say that most of the things I want it to do are sorted out, but the internal (USB) WiFi adapter is stopping me.
The adapter is a Realtek RTL8188CTV. Its wired internally to be powered via a GPIO pin that has to be pulled high in order to give the adapter 3.3V and be detected by the system. Now, previously i tried to use this adapter using the included driver in the kernel rtl8192cu. That had no success, since for some reason, it only worked once and then it complained about the firmware having a bad checksum and some other stuff. After looking for a while, I found about the rtl8xxxu kernel driver, which is newer than rtl8192cu, has less features, uses the mac80211 driver. So, i decided to try it out, i disabled the rtl8192cu driver and enabled the rtl8xxxu driver. It appears to not have any issues with the firmware checksum, but it cannot connect to any network without some intervention. With that, I mean that for open networks, I have to manually set an IP, and for protected (WPA2) networks, it just dosen't works:

usb 1-4: new high-speed USB device number 4 using ehci-platform
usb 1-4: Vendor: Realtek
usb 1-4: Product:
usb 1-4: rtl8192cu_parse_efuse: dumping efuse (0x80 bytes):
usb 1-4: 00: 29 81 00 74 cd 00 00 00
usb 1-4: 08: ff 00 da 0b 76 81 01 41
usb 1-4: 10: 32 00 85 62 9e ad c4 60
usb 1-4: 18: 44 01 a0 a3 09 03 52 65
usb 1-4: 20: 61 6c 74 65 6b 00 00 00
usb 1-4: 28: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
usb 1-4: 30: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
usb 1-4: 38: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
usb 1-4: 40: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
usb 1-4: 48: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
usb 1-4: 50: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00
usb 1-4: 58: 06 00 2d 2d 2d 00 00 00
usb 1-4: 60: 28 28 28 00 00 00 00 00
usb 1-4: 68: 00 02 02 00 03 03 03 00
usb 1-4: 70: 00 00 00 00 00 0a f4 00
usb 1-4: 78: 10 00 00 00 36 00 00 00
usb 1-4: RTL8188CU rev B (TSMC) 1T1R, TX queues 2, WiFi=1, BT=0, GPS=0, HI PA=0
usb 1-4: RTL8188CU MAC: c4:60:44:01:a0:a3
usb 1-4: rtl8xxxu: Loading firmware rtlwifi/rtl8192cufw_TMSC.bin
usb 1-4: Firmware revision 88.2 (signature 0x88c1)
rtl8xxxu 1-4:1.0 wlxc4604401a0a3: renamed from wlan0
wlxc4604401a0a3: authenticate with 9e:e4:45:f3:1c:77
wlxc4604401a0a3: send auth to 9e:e4:45:f3:1c:77 (try 1/3)
wlxc4604401a0a3: authenticated
wlxc4604401a0a3: associate with 9e:e4:45:f3:1c:77 (try 1/3)
wlxc4604401a0a3: RX AssocResp from 9e:e4:45:f3:1c:77 (capab=0x1431 status=0 aid=1)
usb 1-4: rtl8xxxu_bss_info_changed: HT supported
wlxc4604401a0a3: associated
IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlxc4604401a0a3: link becomes ready
wlxc4604401a0a3: disassociated from 9e:e4:45:f3:1c:77 (Reason: 15=4WAY_HANDSHAKE_TIMEOUT)
wlxc4604401a0a3: authenticate with 9e:e4:45:f3:1c:77
wlxc4604401a0a3: send auth to 9e:e4:45:f3:1c:77 (try 1/3)
wlxc4604401a0a3: send auth to 9e:e4:45:f3:1c:77 (try 2/3)
wlxc4604401a0a3: send auth to 9e:e4:45:f3:1c:77 (try 3/3)
wlxc4604401a0a3: authentication with 9e:e4:45:f3:1c:77 timed out
...

Just in case I'm breaking something while building the kernel or setting up the rootfs, I'll attach my kernel config and multistrap.conf file.

 

[Brickwizard]

The RTL8188 is a design that has been going for many years, unfortunately over that period there have been many variants made [distinguished by the suffix letters] and they do not share a common driver, so choosing the right one can be trial and error, as you have an ARM processor [we do not know what make] For WI-FI I suggest you may try the following driver as it has been compiled for an arm based processor https://github.com/1999AZZAR/use-RTL8188FTV-on-linux [no guarantees, but it looks most suitable,]
if you have linux running on this machine, any chance you could install inxi and run from a terminal inxi -Nn ,then copy/paste back the results

 

[osprey]

The output shows the "link becomes ready" which suggests that the firmware and driver are functioning as intended, but the problem is "authentication ... timed out"

This may have something to do with the access point which could need 802.11g, or 802.11n etc. so the wifi needs to authenticate with the congruent standard ... a or n or g etc. If you search online for something like "wifi authentication timed out linux" there may be some similar experience with proposals to try.

 

[z7vl7abxc]

disassociated from 9e:e4:45:f3:1c:77 (Reason: 15=4WAY_HANDSHAKE_TIMEOUT)

a couple of links from a web search suggest that might be a mismatched password issue: https://askubuntu.com/a/844233

link 2: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1959308#p1959308

regarding that first link, it looks like rtl8xxxu might not have a hardware encryption parameter to disable. this is output from mx linux 21 (based on debian 11):

modinfo -F parm rtl8xxxu
debug:Set debug mask (int)
ht40_2g:Enable HT40 support on the 2.4GHz band (bool)
dma_aggregation:Enable DMA packet aggregation (bool)
dma_agg_timeout:Set DMA aggregation timeout (range 1-127) (int)
dma_agg_pages:Set DMA aggregation pages (range 1-127, 0 to disable) (int)

that second link seems to suggest that the program handling the password authentication may possibly have something to do with the issue.

 

[fpp]

Sorry for the wait. Ive had some issues with the laptop and now I'm on kernel 4.14. Still, the same occurs.

The RTL8188 is a design that has been going for many years, unfortunately over that period there have been many variants made [distinguished by the suffix letters] and they do not share a common driver, so choosing the right one can be trial and error, as you have an ARM processor [we do not know what make] For WI-FI I suggest you may try the following driver as it has been compiled for an arm based processor https://github.com/1999AZZAR/use-RTL8188FTV-on-linux [no guarantees, but it looks most suitable,]

I don't think that driver would work for me. I have the RTL8188CTV (and for some reason, linux reports a RTL8188CUS). That said, I'll give it a try anyway, but I'll compile the kernel module on my main PC, because it will take ages to compile on the notebook.

if you have linux running on this machine, any chance you could install inxi and run from a terminal inxi -Nn ,then copy/paste back the results

Network:
  Device-1: vt8500-rhine driver: via_rhine
  IF: eth0 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: 00:40:63:12:21:12
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8188CUS 802.11n WLAN Adapter type: USB
  driver: rtl8xxxu
  IF: wlxc4604401a0a3 state: down mac: aa:14:fb:39:62:e4
  IF-ID-1: sit0 state: down mac: 00:00:00:00

This may have something to do with the access point which could need 802.11g, or 802.11n etc. so the wifi needs to authenticate with the congruent standard ... a or n or g etc.

I dont think that could be an issue. The adapter supports (extracted from the datasheet) 802.11b/g/n, and my wireless network is 2.4GHz.

If you search online for something like "wifi authentication timed out linux" there may be some similar experience with proposals to try.

I've searched quite some time, that's why I asked here. But i'll keep on searching...

a couple of links from a web search suggest that might be a mismatched password issue: https://askubuntu.com/a/844233

I'm pretty sure the password is not the issue. Its as simple as it can get (12345678).

link 2: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1959308#p1959308

tried running wpa_supplicant -B -i interface -c <(wpa_passphrase MYSSID passphrase), but that ended up in the same place: authentication timed out.

 

[fpp]

Ok, after looking a little bit more, I found about this git. i first tried to fix the rtl8xxxu driver. It did change some things. I had to manually set an IP address, but it was able to authenticate. The only thing is that if the connection failed, the device would just hang there, not updating the nearby networks. To fix it i had to replug the device in order for the driver to start again. Also, the connection wasn't very stable.
So i proceeded to compile the rtl8192cu-fixes, and after fighting a little bit with installing the module, it was able to connect, authenticate, and obtain an IP address by its own. Performance is not the best (seems to be capped at 25mbps), but I dont know if i should blame the driver, the adapter or the system itself