[Bug] Connect to 'hidden' Wifi fails

[pottendo]

Description of the bug
Sample application (hello_wlan) can't connect to a hidden Wifi. Connecting to the very same network made 'visible' on the router works.

Affected version(s) and hardware

Tested on a Pi3 B+, 32bit kernel, tested with current 'master' 50.0.1 + the workaround to avoid crash with mesh-networks (#616)
and with current develop branch.

Log output or screenshots
wpa_supplicant.conf:

#
# wpa_supplicant.conf
#

country=AT

network={
	ssid="pottendo-lte"
	scan_ssid=1
	psk="xxxMYPWxxx"
	proto=WPA2
	key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}

Maybe hidden networks are anyway unsupported or for good reason not available - So let me know if
I should provide more logs by switching to MSG_DEBUG level.

int wpa_supplicant_main (const char *confname)
{
[...]
	params.wpa_debug_level = MSG_DEBUG;

[rsta2]

I'm afraid hidden networks currently do not work and are not supported. I tried several options in wpa_supplicant.conf and nothing worked.

[pottendo]

Hi Rene,
thanks for the quick analysis - as always, big thumbs up!
I got the report on my project (see cross reference above). It seems to not work also in previous versions, so the recent change of wpa_supplicant is not the issue.
You may close this for now - unless you want to keep an eye on it. ;-)
bye, pottendo

[rsta2]

Thanks pottendo. We should keep this open for the case, that other users have the same problem. And maybe it can be solved later.

[iissmart]

I'm afraid hidden networks currently do not work and are not supported. I tried several options in wpa_supplicant.conf and nothing worked.

Any chance this has been fixed in circle 51? I don't have an easy way to test it, but this issue was written against circle 50.0.1.

[rsta2]

The WLAN support has not been changed in Circle 51. This problem is still there. Honestly I have no idea, how it could be fixed.

[danifunker]

I think I have a patch for this, but it needs to be tested.

add this line to your wpa_supplicant.conf
scan_ssid=1

Please provide some input for me, thanks a lot!

This is for hostap :

hidden-wifi-driver_circle.patch

This is for circle repo:

hidden-wifi-ether4330.patch

Please let me know how this goes. If it seems to work I'll put in an official PR

[rsta2]

Many thanks for the patches. I will test them soon.

[rsta2]

It works, that's great! I successfully tested with and without hidden SSID. I will merge the PRs soon.

[rsta2]

@danifunker Your code looks clean and works here. Thus I merged both PRs now and made the updated hostap version the default on the develop branch. Thank you again for this contribution!

[pottendo]

hi, thanks for the update - I'll try it also in the upcoming days.
all the best, pottendo

[pottendo]

Hi,
I can confirm that the patch works also for my application - good work, spotting and fixing the issue!
thanx, pottendo

[rsta2]

@pottendo Thanks for testing!

[pottendo]

Hi Rene,
any plans to do a release including this fix in the near future? I've delayed the next release of my application a bit to wait until then. I may decide to not wait depending on your (rough) time-plan.
thx, pottendo

[danifunker]

Feel free to create a patching system like the one I have on usbode-circle. That way you don't need to wait for official releases.

[pottendo]

Feel free to create a patching system like the one I have on usbode-circle. That way you don't need to wait for official releases.

thanks, will have a look - though I don't want to cherry-pick patches; as of now the steps as released by Rene deliver good integrated consistency; and I'm actually using circle-stdlib. Let's see what I get as feedback - I'm not in a rush.