Ubuntu – Cannot downgrade wpa_supplicant to fix Wi-Fi connection to a corporate network (WPA2/PEAP with no CA certificate) in Ubuntu 18.04

18.04downgradewirelesswpa-supplicant

I recently upgraded my Ubuntu from 16.04 to 18.04 (clean install, full wipe). Now I can no longer connect to the corporate network at my office (perhaps related to these bugs: bug 1, bug 2). What proved to fix this issue in Ubuntu 16.04 is the answer to this question; Downgrade wpa_supplicant to 2.1.

However, even with the linode repository, this fix can no longer be applied. There is no version for wpa_supplicant below 2.6 to the best of my knowledge for Ubuntu 18.04.

My question is this: How can I downgrade wpa_supplicant to 2.1 for Ubuntu 18.04?

Configuration needed for corporate the wifi connection:

Security: WPA & WPA2 Enterprise
Authentication: Protected EAP (PEAP)
Checkbox No CA certificate required.
Inner authentication: MSCHAPv2

Best Answer

I found a solution and it is working flawlessly. Here are the steps:

Add Ubuntu Vivid and Xenial repos.

$ cat <<'EOF' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/vivid.list
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ vivid main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ vivid-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ vivid-security main restricted universe multiverse
EOF

$ cat <<'EOF' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xenial.list
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-updates main restricted universe multiverse
deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ xenial-security main restricted universe multiverse
EOF

Update your repo list.
```
$ sudo apt -y update
```

Downgrade wpasupplicant and install libssl.

$ sudo apt -y --allow-downgrades install wpasupplicant=2.1-0ubuntu7.3

$ sudo apt -y --allow-downgrades install libssl1.0.0=1.0.2g-1ubuntu4.14

Setup priority for the recently installed packages.

$ sudo echo -e "Package: wpasupplicant\nPin: release o=Ubuntu,n=vivid\nPin-Priority: 1001" | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/vivid

$ sudo echo -e "Package: libssl1.0.0\nPin: release o=Ubuntu,n=xenial\nPin-Priority: 1001" | sudo tee /etc/apt/preferences.d/xenial

Restart your computer.

Credits: http://viranzo.blogs.upv.es/2018/09/11/downgrade-wpa_supplicant-ubuntu-18-04

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Connecting to wireless networks from command line

I'm assuming you're using Ubuntu Desktop as you didn't specify otherwise.

You can create a wireless network configuration that will be managed by Network Manager by creating files in /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections. Look at existing files to see how the format looks like.

Once the connection is created, you can use the nmcli command to manage NetworkManager from the command line, doing things such as enabling, disabling and querying connections.

Incidentally, the System Testing tool (checkbox) has a script that does exactly this: creates a connection and enables it, with parameters that you supply on the command line.

For instance, this creates a connection to the open "duck" network:

sudo /usr/share/checkbox/scripts/create_connection duck

This will create a connection to a network using WPA2 security, with "wings" password:

sudo /usr/share/checkbox/scripts/create_connection -S wpa -K wings duck

The script is written in Python so it should be easy for you to look at and adapt to your needs.

The script's help says this:

Usage: create_connection [options] SSID

Options:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  -S SECURITY, --security=SECURITY
                        The type of security to be used by the connection.
                        One of wpa and wep. No security will be used if
                        nothing is specified.
  -K KEY, --key=KEY     The encryption key required by the router.
  -U UUID, --uuid=UUID  The uuid to assign to the connection for use by
                        NetworkManager. One will be generated if not
                        specified here.
  -R RETRIES, --retries=RETRIES
                        The number of times to attempt bringing up the
                        connection until it is confirmed as active.
  -I INTERVAL, --interval=INTERVAL
                        The time to wait between attempts to detect the
                        registration of the connection.

Ubuntu – After upgrade to 15.10 Wifi to a corporate network (WPA2) is not working anymore

I got the same issue here: The problem is the wpa_supplicant 2.4 as you can read here: http://community.arubanetworks.com/t5/Unified-Wired-Wireless-Access/Internal-radius-server-incompatibility-with-the-new-wpa/td-p/236602

If you do a downgrade to 2.3 this problem will be resolve !

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Ubuntu – Connecting to wireless networks from command line

Ubuntu – After upgrade to 15.10 Wifi to a corporate network (WPA2) is not working anymore

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