Has anyone ever seen this behaviour: (sorry screenreader users for the amount of # in this, trying to get a broad coverage)

I have a #WLAN with a @mikrotik hAP Mini as access point and bridge into the LAN; DHCP server is the BSD box behind that in the LAN.

I was associated from a #Lenovo #Thinkpad #X61 #iwl4965 running #Debian #bullseye with sysvinit and #ifupdown.

Then someone on a #Tuxedo #InfinityBook #N13xWU #iwl8265/8275 with Debian #bookworm and systemd tried to connect, also with ifupdown. In that same moment, I saw this in my dmesg:

Apr 26 16:21:08 host wpa_supplicant[7322]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-BEACON-LOSS 
Apr 26 16:21:12 host last message repeated 4 times
Apr 26 16:21:12 host vmunix: [9833573.801654] wlan0: deauthenticated from xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (Reason: 6=CLASS2_FRAME_FROM_NONAUTH_STA)
Apr 26 16:21:12 host wpa_supplicant[7322]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx reason=6
Apr 26 16:21:12 host wpa_supplicant[7322]: wlan0: SME: Trying to authenticate with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (SSID='myssidname' freq=2422 MHz)
Apr 26 16:21:12 host wpa_supplicant[7322]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-REGDOM-CHANGE init=CORE type=WORLD
Apr 26 16:21:12 host wpa_supplicant[7322]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-REGDOM-CHANGE init=USER type=COUNTRY alpha2=DE
Apr 26 16:21:15 host wpa_supplicant[7322]: wlan0: SME: Trying to authenticate with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (SSID='myssidname' freq=2422 MHz)
Apr 26 16:21:15 host vmunix: [9833576.586487] wlan0: authenticate with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
Apr 26 16:21:15 host vmunix: [9833576.591044] wlan0: send auth to xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (try 1/3)
Apr 26 16:21:15 host vmunix: [9833576.600286] wlan0: authenticated
Apr 26 16:21:15 host vmunix: [9833576.603383] iwl4965 0000:03:00.0 wlan0: disabling HT/VHT/HE as WMM/QoS is not supported by the AP
Apr 26 16:21:15 host wpa_supplicant[7322]: wlan0: Trying to associate with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (SSID='myssidname' freq=2422 MHz)
Apr 26 16:21:15 host vmunix: [9833576.608113] wlan0: associate with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (try 1/3)
Apr 26 16:21:15 host vmunix: [9833576.716107] wlan0: associate with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (try 2/3)
Apr 26 16:21:15 host vmunix: [9833576.828160] wlan0: associate with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx (try 3/3)
Apr 26 16:21:15 host vmunix: [9833576.940095] wlan0: association with xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx timed out

From that point on, I could not connect any more, even when the Tuxedo left the WLAN, until I toggled the rfkill switch in front of the device twice.

(About ten minutes before that, the Tuxedo was connected and I was not, and I could not connect either until I toggled rfswitch twice.)

Peeking into the syslog of the Tuxedo, whose time is roughly synchronised, I see that at about 16:21:09 they did an ifdown, not an ifup, which came a couple of seconds later‽

For added fun: apparently, systemd starts a global copy of wpa_supplicant but ifupdown rewrites its config and starts its own, so at that point, two were running…

More tags: #WiFi (for those who don’t use the term WLAN) #wpa #wpa_supplicant