[gPXE] WPA2-encrypted wireless booting with ath5k

[Alexander Heinz]

Hello!

I would like to start with thanking you for the features you have 
integrated in the last years.

Some years ago I experimented with Etherboot/PXELinux but that was long 
before gPXE was there. HTTP, iSCSI, AOE and even WiFi ... that is just 
amazing!

I am especially interested in WiFi and hope that you can help me build a 
working setup.

I have downloaded the latest source code snapshot (the tarball linked on 
the wiki page) and I have built a PXE bootstrap loader image (.pxe) with 
the following command:

make bin/ath5k.pxe DEBUG=wpa EMBEDDED_IMAGE=/home/user/wifi_berlin.gpxe

the integrated script looks like this:
#!gpxe
iwlist
iwstat
set net0/ssid mySSID
set net0/key myWPApassphrase
dhcp net0
kernel http://etherboot.org/gtest/bz2bzImage root=100
initrd http://etherboot.org/gtest/initrd.bz2
boot

my target PC has 2 NICs:
Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
168c:001a (rev 01) Atheros AR5005G 802.11abg NIC

The Realtek NIC which is also running gPXE just chainloads ath5k.pxe. 
The output of iwlist and iwstat makes sense (2 WiFi networks incl the 
target network are listed). My AP is listed as WPA2. It is configured to 
support both, WPA and WPA2. The access is not restricted to certain MAC 
addresses. The distance between AP and the wifi client is 3 meters (no 
walls in between).

However the link does not come up. I get the following error:

Waiting for link-up on net0...WPA 0x2daf8 ALERT: PMKID mismatch in 1/4
WPA 0x2daa8 ALERT: PMKID mismatch in 1/4
last message appears 17 times
  failed: Permission denied (0x0226603c)
Could not configure net0: Permission denied (0x0226603c)

I am sorry for not providing a detailed log. This PC does not have any 
serial ports, so I cannot use a NULL modem cable to capture the output.

I have entered the WPA passphrase several times to make sure there is no 
typo in it. Can you think of anything else that I could check?

Thank you very much!

Best regards,
Alex