Method was tested on Fedora 8 distribution, but should work on every Linux (and even on different BSD flavors).
Before starting, make sure that newtwork adapter is working (usually it limit itself to copying firmware into appropiate place).
To connect this way to wireless network, root privileges are required. One should never log in to system as root. Root privileges are gained by entering in console
su -
.
On majority of distributions wpa_supplicant
is located in the installation drive. All that has to be done is installing it. Depending on a distribution, commands will look more-or-less like this (one of the following):
rpm -Uvh path_to_file/wpa_supplicant.rpm
yum install wpa_supplicant
apt-get install wpasupplicant
DHCP client is installed by default in all major distributions.
Create (or edit) wpa_supplicant
configuration. By default it's the file /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
, but if one pleases it can be put in arbitrary place. This file should have a following content:
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=wheel
network={
ssid="wmi"
key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
eap=PEAP
identity="s123456"
password="secret password"
}
Change accordingly lines identity i password.
To initialize a connection execute (as root) commands:
wpa_supplicant -B -i wlan0 -D wext -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
dhclient wlan0
In examples above we presume that network adaper is named wlan0
and that installed driver supports so-called wireless extensions (this applies to majority of newer drivers).
Some distributions may be missing dhclient
program, other programs with the same functionality are dhcpcd
or pump
.