Mesh Problem

[Bill Moffitt]

Follow-up:

I tried it on an Atheros-based AP (Alfa N2Q) and found the same thing
- works for unencrypted mesh, but adding wpad-mesh-mbedtls causes the
mesh to fail completely, and mesh_params cannot be set:

root at OpenWrt:~# iw phy0-mesh0 set mesh_param mesh_gate_announcements=1
command failed: Link has been severed (-67)

I set log_level to 0 and got some interesting errors:

Tue Jun 25 00:40:11 2024 kern.info kernel: [ 2898.625083] br-lan: port
4(phy0-mesh0) entered blocking state
Tue Jun 25 00:40:11 2024 kern.info kernel: [ 2898.631437] br-lan: port
4(phy0-mesh0) entered disabled state
Tue Jun 25 00:40:11 2024 kern.info kernel: [ 2898.637879] device
phy0-mesh0 entered promiscuous mode
Tue Jun 25 00:40:11 2024 kern.info kernel: [ 2898.643613] br-lan: port
4(phy0-mesh0) entered blocking state
Tue Jun 25 00:40:11 2024 kern.info kernel: [ 2898.649659] br-lan: port
4(phy0-mesh0) entered forwarding state
Tue Jun 25 00:40:11 2024 daemon.err wpa_supplicant[1211]: Line 8: too
large mode (value=5 max_value=4)
Tue Jun 25 00:40:11 2024 daemon.err wpa_supplicant[1211]: Line 8:
failed to parse mode '5'.
Tue Jun 25 00:40:11 2024 daemon.err wpa_supplicant[1211]: Line 15:
failed to parse network block.
Tue Jun 25 00:40:11 2024 daemon.err wpa_supplicant[1211]: Failed to
read or parse configuration '/var/run/wpa_supplicant-phy0-mesh0.conf'.
Tue Jun 25 00:40:11 2024 daemon.notice wpa_supplicant[1211]: :
CTRL-EVENT-DSCP-POLICY clear_all
Tue Jun 25 00:40:11 2024 daemon.notice netifd: radio0 (4079): WARNING
(wireless_add_process): executable path /usr/sbin/wpad does not match
process 1212 path (/usr/sbin/wpad (deleted))
Tue Jun 25 00:40:11 2024 kern.info kernel: [ 2899.068199] br-lan: port
4(phy0-mesh0) entered disabled state
Tue Jun 25 00:40:12 2024 daemon.notice wpa_supplicant[1211]: Set new
config for phy phy0

So it definitely looks like a problem with wpa_supplicant.

root at OpenWrt:~# wpa_supplicant -v
wpa_supplicant v2.11-devel

Again, any suggestions appreciated.

-Bill


On Fri, Jun 21, 2024 at 8:42 AM Bill Moffitt <bmoffitt at ayrstone.com> wrote:
>
> Trying to set up meshing on Comfast EW-72 v2 - my first time working
> with the Mediatek chipset. I have played around with meshing quite a
> bit on Atheros chips.
>
> The interesting problem is that it seems to work in v23.05.2 and
> v23.05.3 with wpad-basic-mbedtls, but, when I swap it out for
> wpad-mesh (tried both mbedtls and wolfssl), it won't work. When I use
> iw phy0-mesh0 mesh_param dump, I see that mesh_auto_open_plinks=0,
> which explains why it won't connect to the mesh.
>
> However, trying to set it never works:
>
> root at OpenWrt:~# iw phy0-mesh0 set mesh_param mesh_auto_open_plinks=1
> command failed: Resource busy (-16)
>
> Interestingly, when I swap wpad-basic back in, it does work, but it
> appears to connect with encryption.
>
> uci set wireless.mesh.encryption='psk'
> uci set wireless.mesh.key='xxxxxxxxxx'
> wifi
>
> and the nodes connect. However, if I leave encryption off on one node,
> it STILL CONNECTS, meaning that encryption is failing silently
> (nothing in the logs). It seems like there should be at least a
> message ("Encryption configured for interface mesh but not enabled" or
> something).
>
> I'm not quite sure how to even debug this.
>
> All suggestions gratefully accepted.
>
> -Bill