Airport requiring me to re-enter network name, WEP key, each time
 

I upgraded to the most current Airport drivers (3.3, i think). Now, the Airport card keeps forgetting my settings. Often, upon waking from sleep, I have to rejoin my private wireless network and re-enter the password.

This is an incredible pain in the ass, and did not happen before the upgrade.

I tried renaming the common airport .plist file, so that it would be recreated, but that didn't help.

Ideas?

Have you added the WEP password to your keychain?

I haven't. I keep waiting for it to ask me if it should add it, but I don't get asked.

Is there a manual process for adding this to the keychain?

Yep. Umm.. It's either in the Network prefpane, or Internet Connect. Frankly, I cannot remember which. There will be a keychain checkbox.

OK, I'm not in front of *my* machine but I looked at another and don't see that in either of those places.

???

You're not going to see it unless you're attempting to connect to your wifi network. It'll be where you enter/choose the SSID of the wifi network and enter the password. I know for a fact that it's there, as I use it to remember the rediculously long hexadecimal password for my WEP network.

FYI: The latest Airport drivers are 3.3.1.

I have gotten to this point via two paths. 1.) by using the airport status dropdown under the finder, I choose "other" and enter the info. No place to say "add to keychain". 2.) by going to Internet connect and then choosing other for the airport network, I again do not see any "add to keychain" option.

Then try the Airport tab in the Network prefpane.

OK, I am in front of my machine now. I don't see *any* way to add this info to a keychain.

I also tried repairing permissions on the system, but that also had no effect.

This is a pointless exercise that people seem to undergo when they are out of ideas. It's only worthwhile to do this after a OS update/install, and possibly (but not nearly so important) after any old software install. End rant.

Well, I guess I'll have to pull out my laptop and take a look, eh?

Go to the Airport menu in the menubar.
Select the SSID of the WiFi network you're trying to connect to.
Up pops a window asking for a password with a checkbox for the Keychain.

I'm not chooseing one from the dropdown. I'm selecting "other" because I've created a hidden and closed network, so my SSID doesn't get displayed in the dropdown.

When I choose Other, up pops a window asking for the type of WEP key that I'm using (regular, ascii, hex), the SSID, and my password. There is no checkbox to add it to any keychain.

That's the only place with a checkbox to add it into the keychain automatically.
You probably can create a keychain entry manually.

Has anyone done this? Created a keychain entry for the Airport network? The keychain app was asking me for a URL or something when I looked last night.

OK, this is soooo annoying. Every user logout and ever time it wakes from a sleep it loses the info about our closed network.

HELP!

Is there some particular reason that the network has to be closed?

I don't want to advertise my SSID. Keep people off of my network.

I thought so, and that's a good reason. I tried to create a keychain entry by hand and was unable to. Doesn't mean that it can't be done. In the meantime, having to type in your WEP-hex-pass a buncha times a day just isn't feasible. So, until you (or we) can come up with a way to make the keychain work for you, there's pretty much only 2 choices.

1) Have an SSID. Sure people can see it, but it's WEP'd with 128-bit encryption. Assuming that your password is lengthy enough, it would take an unbelievable amount of raw computing power and time to break your password/encryption. Which, if you change your password every 3 months would basically make it unbreakable.

2) Don't have an SSID, but have no password. Since people cannot see the broadcast, it's very hard for it to be found. You have to know the name of the network to get on it. Sure, there's no password, but having no SSID will keep all but the "professional" out.

And for both instances, with the shear amount of unprotected WiFi points out there (Lowe's for goodness sake!), most people who knew what they were doing (or even didn't) would move onto easier targets.

Hope this helps put it in perspective for the time being.

after your earlier post asking about the closed network, I turned that off and tried again. Now, I can get the password into a keychain (woo hoo) however...

On sleep, restart, or shutdown/reboot, the system forgets which network I've asked it to associate with. So, my apps still don't work until I manually select my SSID from the dropdown.

Easier than before, I don't have to key the password, but still different behavior than before I upgraded and still annoying.

Why is the Airport SW forgetting/clearing the network that I've asked it to be part of?

I've also found it to be somewhat counter-intuative because of all the choices given to you to connect to a wireless network. If you set in the AirPort tab of the Network PrefPane, "By Default, join: Automatic", then it should reattach to your currently selected AirPort network upon reboot/wake.

should, I agree.

but it doesn't.

I just recreated my network, new name, new wep key, everything. if I sleep the system, and then wake it up, I've got no IP connectivity.

You'll have to give me a while to try and figure out how I did it. I stumbled across it once, had to reinstall the OS and it took me a while to stumble upon it again.

Sorry, it works exactly as described for me above.

so do we know where that information would be stored? Perhaps it's not getting written, and I need to blow away a plist or some other conf file and let it be recreated?

Or so you think that a panther reinstall will solve the problem?

Is there any way for me to back out the pkg with the new airport drivers and go back to the way it was?

Unknown. I think reinstalling Panther is extreme and should be your last (last, last, last) resort. I think you should first play with how you set it up.
Attempt to create the connection in various ways. I can assure you that it is possible with Panther and AirPort 3.3.1. I've done it for 2 different laptops at home.

Manually adding a WEP key to Keychain.app
 

In Keychain.app choose File->New Password Item…

Under Name, Type "Airport Network" with no quotes.

Under Account, enter the SSID, whether it's broadcast or not.

In Password, input the password (duh); mine is hex, so it's preceded with $.

When these are done, click Add.

Then, select the item from the list, and click the Access Control tab. Add /System/Library/CoreServices/SystemUIserver and /Applications/Internet Connect

Then try connecting via Internet Connect. It should just snaffle up your keychain details and connect. If you have to still connect manually, then make an alias of the shared drive. Disconnect, the double-click the drive. That should twig SystemUIServer to grab the details.

Finally, I would argue that it doesn't really matter whether you broadcast your SSID. It's much more secure to limit association to known MAC addresses, and only assign from a pool of IPs which just is large enough to accommodate your computers (ie, if you have three computers, assign from 192.168.0.2-4). Regularly rotating your WEP key is also important, but only if you suspect there will be people trying to crack it.

i just got off the phone after 3 hours with level 1 and level 2 applecare support on this.

after getting told by level 1 support that a closed network was not supported by apple :-> i was put in touch with level 2 folks. after checking many possible options, the tech came to the conclusion that there might have been something changed in the airport drivers to require the user to manually enter the ssid (if it wasn't broadcast) as well as the wep key. he wasn't sure about this, but it certainly would explain why i am running into the same problem that oldmoose seems to have run into.

basically, i _use to_ be able to come home, wake the tibook up and connect automatically. now i have to click "other" enter my ssid and key. connection works but no longer automatically.

Actually WEP is not that secure. 128-bit WEP keys can be cracked using nothing more then your trusty PowerBook. Given sufficient data (a couple of GB will should be sufficient), cracking the WEP key is not difficult. Depending on the amount of activity on the network, capturing a couple Gig of data wouldn't be very difficult. Here is a good example from O'Reilly showing how easy it is to crack a WEP key

http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wire...sshacks_chap1/

There are lots of good, free tools to find, and penetrate a wireless network.

I would change the WEP key monthly, not hand out DHCP addresses, disable SSID broadcasts, and use MAC address filtering if I was mildly worried.

Actually turning off the SSID broadcast is more cosmetic then anything. When any wireless station associates with the access point, the SSID is broadcast out to the world. So if I have the time to capture a Gig of data I'll have the SSID too. Oh yeah, I'd also have the MAC addresses of machines allowed to connect to the wireless network.

If I was really worried about it, then VPN to the wireless network would be the weapon of choice.

So Geodude1, did they give you any resolution? Are they going to fix it? Or, did they tell you how you could backrev to the previous drivers?

on the downside, no resolution was given. but, i have a better understanding of what possibly is going on.

a simple "fix" is to turn on broadcasting of the ssid, then autodetect works as it did pre-upgrade to 10.3.3. not an ideal solution but it seems to be the only fix for getting autodetection back working.

Linksys, Airport, WPA, WEP, password
 

I have been dealing with the same thing. I hope this helps. I'm using a Linksys Wirelss G Router and Airport Extreme card with WPA encryption. I also used WEP successfully.

I had to enter my network name and password in the Network System Prefs. Go to "Show" menu and choose Airport.

I chose to connect to specific network. I entered Network name (my SSID broadcast is diabled) For password I entered my WPA passphrase (if suing WEP, the #1 Key goes here)

screenshot -->consumo.spymac.net/wpa.gif

FYI - I came across no adding-to-keychain option in my adventures. I am using WPA Pre-Shared Key, with TKIP Algorithim. NO SSID broadcast.

consumo
--
14" iBook G4 / 933 / 640 Mb / 10.3.3

Another possible fix for broken Airport auto-login
 

I had the exact same problem when I upgraded to Panther 10.3.3 from 10.2.8 One thing I tried that seemed to reduce the frequency of the problem (but not completely eliminate it) was to run Apple's Keychain Repair utility. Now I don't have to reenter the network password ... but I still do have to manually select the network occasionally.

I convinced that some combination of travels through my various locations (multiple airport networks, ethernet at work, cell phone on the road, etc.) triggers the bug still, but overall Keychain Repair "mostly" fixed it.

I know this is an old topic, but...
 

what version of Mac OS X are you using? My wife's Tangerine Clamshell runs 10.2.8 still and for the longest time, we kept having to reenter our school's SSID and 25+ character password. (I eventually memorized it.) I went looking for an answer and I figured out that I had to set it to "Join most recently used available network" (or something close to that) and "Remember password." Both of these are on the Network pane I think. Now, it works without a hitch no matter where we are.

Like I said, I know this is an old topic, but I thought maybe someone might have run into this and be looking for more responses.

Jamie "Berko" pH

...and old topic , but a current one.
 

Aluminum Powerbook, 10.3.9 and a WEP network...

Even after editing the keychain, the WEP key does not stick. There is positively nowhere to ask 'add to keychain' - the only way to do that is to manually add it with the keychain editor. Still, after putting my powerbook to sleep, it asks for the WEP key.

I also had the problem with entering a 'keychain password' when editing keychains under 'System' (there was only one password there, the airport one). But I can edit keychains under my own user heading.

Anyone still having trouble, or know of a definitive answer ? Is there a reason my keychain does not want to release up the password when I connect?

I think I have a similar problem to that discussed above, and have a sort-of work around for it (though it's still a bit annoying):

When my Powerbook wakes from sleep after being off for some time, I have no wireless connection. Selecting my network from the dropdown list prompts me to enter the WEP password. But, it doesn't matter what I enter into the box - correct password or just a few random letters - it won't connect and will say the password is incorrect. However, if I click ok (not 'try again' as that just repeats the problem) and then select my network again, it connects straight away with no trouble - presumably using the password from the keychain. So now I never bother typing in the password - I just press one letter, hit enter, and then click on the menu again. As I say, it isn't a problem if the Mac has only been sleeping for a short while.

Does anyone else have this problem? Does anyone know how to solve it?!

JL

This worked for me (finally)
 

Log into the base station to temporarily uncheck "create a closed network." This is the hoop you go through to add the network password to the keychain (see next). Update (restart) base station.

After the base station restarts, the SSID should be visible. Reconnect to the network. Note there is now a checkbox to add the item to your keychain, which there isn't when you select "Other..." Check the box to add the password to your keychain.

Log back into the base station to re-check "create a closed network."

Now the SSID is not broadcasted, but the item is in the keychain, so the amnesia goes away.

Other: Network pref pane; Airport set to Automatic (not preferred networks). Still connects to my preferred network without user help. Static IP. Base station using WPA2 Personal.

I included some log junk that has finally stopped.

Jun 6 15:08:42 PowerBook-2 kernel[0]: AirPort: Link DOWN (AP deAuth 0)
Jun 6 15:08:42 PowerBook-2 kernel[0]: AirPort: Link DOWN (Client disAssoc 0)

Jun 6 15:14:03 PowerBook-2 configd[39]: Error: SecTrustedApplicationCreateFromPath() returns 100002

I also discovered a couple preferences with incorrect ownership, so that I could only read them. The keychain verifier actually discovered it, not me.

Cheers...

Damn, automatically joining a network is still not working
 

Ok, I've read through most of these hints, but I STILL cannot get my PB to automatically join my home network.

The computer DOES successfully join my school's wireless network, but each and EVERY time it does NOT pick up any of my home networks.

I currently have 3 different routers (on 3 different floors) and each time I go to sleep or reboot, I need to manually join one of the three networks. They are each running WPA, but I don't have to enter the password. I have also added them to the preferred network list (in order of preference), but still no luck.

Help!

Maybe look at this MacFixit report on Airport troubleshooting and try some of the things it suggests - in particular, try removing all Airport-related items from Network prefs and Keychain and re-enter them:
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?...05093011343164

Adding a closed network with wep key on keychain application
 

I've finally found a way to keep wireless setting stored on keychain when the network is closed or hidden.

1. Open keychain access and create a new password item for application
2. Under Keychain Item Name:, type "Airport Network"
3. Under Account Name:, type "Network SSID" (your network SSID of course)
4. Under Password:, type "Your WEP Key"
5. Open the password item you just created (Double click on it)
6. Under Where:, type "Internet Connect Service"
7. Move to Access Control tab and select "Confirm before allowing access"
8. Click on Add sign (+) and add your Internet Connect Applicaction (usually on /Applications)
9. Click on save

And now you're ready

Note: you can use the same procedure to manually add a closed or hidden network no matter its encryption method.

What solved this Airport problem for me
 

I'm posting years after this thread's last post, but for those who happen to stumble upon it, my hidden wireless network is now automatically seen thanks to these steps.

From Chris K originally at http://discussions.info.apple.com/th...readID=2159023 but quoted in full here:

"I had the same problem. I'll tell you what seemed to work for me. I heard that this issue has to do with you having created multiple Keychain password entries for the same network password, and the computer gets hung up juggling them. I eliminated all my preferred networks and then created a new preferred network with the correct password, etc., and I haven't had the problem since. Every time I wake my MacBook Air, it jumps onto the correct network, which in my case is a closed (hidden) WPA2 Personal. It's probably not really necessary to eliminate all the other (unrelated) Preferred Networks, but this worked for me... just make sure you write down any needed notes about other networks, passwords, etc. before you delete them.

Go to System Preferences>Network. With the location selected where you're having this connection problem, click Advanced. Select a network name under Preferred Networks, then press the minus button. Repeat until you've eliminated all of them. Close System Preferences and then come back to this location. Then go back and add the Airport network & password that you're trying to use. Like the others have said, make sure Airport is dragged to the top of the left hand column in the Networks panel, first priority, etc. Hope this helps.

Message was edited by: Chris K"


Once I did the steps in the second paragraph, including re-adding my hidden wireless network after previously removing it as instructed, it was active and worked automatically when I rebooted !

Cheers!

Rob

you need added the WEP password to your keychain