Ubuntu Wireless WPA Configuration Help

Capt Doufos · 3 Feb 2007 at 09:29

Hi,

Has anyone got this working successfully?

I was messing around all last night without success. I followed all the guides I could find with no joy.

The Card is detected, it's a Intel 2200 in a Centrino laptop. I have the WIFI Supplicant installed and the Network Monitor.

I installed WIFI Radar and I can see networks, so the wierless card is definitely working.

Reading guides you are supposed to edit the wpa_supplicant.conf found in /etc but this didn't exist. ? copied one over and edited that. But still no joy.

Any body know how to go about getting this working without resorting to WEP?

Thanks

Spider · 3 Feb 2007 at 11:35

You will need to run wpa_passphrase with the essid of your WLAN and the passcode (i.e. wpa_passphrase "MYWLAN" MYWIRELESSKEY2007) which will generate you a long passkey. copy and paste this into a file called wpa_supplicant.conf somewhere (usually /etc) and then when you launch wpa_supplicant point it to the interface of your wireless card and this config file

e.g.
wpa_supplicant -Dwext -ieth1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

You will need to set the channel beforehand using iwconfig and the IP settings for the device using ifconfig.

After that it should work.

Good luck!

Sumanji · 3 Feb 2007 at 12:23

Linux noob here, just installed Ubuntu 6.10 last night on an old laptop. My wireless card (D-Link DWL-G650+) is recognised and I can see it in the Network Connections menu thingy where I can type in SSID and a password. However there is no way to enter a WPA-PSK. I'm guessing this requires an additional plug-in or something?

Cheers,

Suman

Capt Doufos · 3 Feb 2007 at 17:02

Thanks for the info. I think I have gotten a little further. I get a lot of errors when I try to start wpa_supplicant and it says frequency = 0mhz even though I specified channel 6 in iwconfig.

I will keep at it. I WILL get it working!!!

Spider · 3 Feb 2007 at 21:17

you can set it to scan all channels using "iwconfig eth1 channel auto" if setting the channel isn't working. Also, using -d will give you the debu mode with some added info on screen (and -dd is double debug or a load more info)

Capt Doufos · 3 Feb 2007 at 21:48

Cheers I will give those a try.

Sumanji:

I am using 6.10 and that pretty much has everything installed you need.

The first place to go is the intergrated help. There is loads of info on supported wireless chipsets etc. The whole ubuntu documentation is very good, just click the help icon and search for the program name.

Programs to look at are:

iwconfig, ifconfig, wpa_supplicant, wpa_passphrase, and network monitor.

It isn't staright forward. Although I found a program that runs on KDE that has a GUI that intergrates most of those tools. I guess you need to be using Kbuntu though to make use of it.

Clarkey · 4 Feb 2007 at 03:39

it IS straight forward.

sudo wpa_passphrase SSID passphrase > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

to test this works do this:

wpa_supplicant -Dwext -ieth1 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

then open up your /etc/network/interfaces and under the section for your wifi card enter in

wpa-driver driver (wext for intel cards, ipw doesnt work)
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

then either reboot or sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Sumanji · 4 Feb 2007 at 12:56

I can't get the WPA Supplicant to start

and it won't generate a .conf file either...

(I have no idea what I'm doing btw... just imagine sitting a 3 year old in front of a Windows machine, and that = me)

Spider · 5 Feb 2007 at 09:20

Sumanji said:
I can't get the WPA Supplicant to start and it won't generate a .conf file either...

(I have no idea what I'm doing btw... just imagine sitting a 3 year old in front of a Windows machine, and that = me)

It wont generate the conf file for you (unless you redirect the output to a file as down above). You can copy and paste the output into a file as root.
Are you getting any errors when you try to run wpa_supplicant? switch to root (sudo) before running it and see if it gives any error...