I’ve been using wpa_supplicant to manage wifi on my Ubuntu laptop for a while, and have found that it’s pretty close to what I want for managing wireless — closer than anything else I’ve found, at least. I figured I should document my setup and experiences.

Some Background  🔗︎

You probably all know just how much wireless on Linux can be a pain to get working right. Getting drivers and so forth working is usually fine these days, especially if you’re using Ubuntu, but managing connecting to multiple networks and dealing with WPA and WEP is a serious pain in the ass. Debian’s solution the ifupdown infrastructure lets you specify a single network or any, and doesn’t have an answer for encryption, as far as I can tell. Ubuntu (and Fedora)’s NetworkManager works great when it works, but it wants to own your entire networking stack, isn’t very transparent or debuggable when networking isn’t working, and the only interface is a dock applet, which is problematic for my minimalist XMonad-based desktop.

Enter wpa_supplicant  🔗︎

Despite its name, wpa_supplicant isn’t just about WPA. It’s actually a general management system for your wireless in disguise. You give it a config file of networks you want to connect to if they’re available, optionally with priorities, and settings about the kind of encryption and a password or key if needed. You then tell it “go”, and it will go scan for networks and connect to the appropriate ones as needed. If you need to override it, there’s a command line client (wpa_cli) to connect to the running ndaemon and tell it connect to a specific network or AP (I think — I haven’t actually had occasion to use it much at all)

My configuration  🔗︎

I have an Atheros wifi card, so my wifi device is ath0. Adjust this as appropriate (it’ll probably be eth1 with most other drivers)

First, install the necessary packages:

$ sudo apt-get install wpasupplicant

Then set up your configuration:

• /etc/network/interfaces — We’re still going to use ifupdown to manage getting DHCP, but just not for wireless. So add a stanza to interfaces that looks something like:

    auto ath0
    iface ath0 inet dhcp
    wpa-driver wext
    wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
  

• /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf — This is the file where you’re going to specify what networks you want to connect to. /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/examples/ can explain the full range of options better than I can, but there are some examples below. For now, you can just put a

    ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
  

at the start of the file.

Now, configure your networks in wpa_supplicant.conf. Some examples:

• MIT’s network – open, no encryption

    network={
        ssid="MIT"
        key_mgmt=NONE
    }
  

• WEP, hex key

    network={
        ssid="langtonlabs"
        key_mgmt=NONE
        wep_key0=deadbeef
    }
  

• WPA1, password

    network={
        ssid="wireless-is-a-lie"
        psk="passw0rd"
    }
  

Now if you bring up the interface with ifup ath0, wpa_supplicant will start scanning for networks and associate as needed. The crappy thing about this solution is that there’s no communication between wpa_supplicant and dhclient, so you won’t automatically try to get a new lease if you switch networks. I solve this with a ifup --force ath0 when I move my laptop between access points. I don’t do this too often without suspending, though, so it’s not a huge deal. Browsing documentation points me at something called wpa_action that’s supposed to fix this… If I figure it out I’ll post again.

This works quite well for me, better than any other solution I’ve found for moving my laptop between multiple access points, and handles WEP, WPA, and WPA2 just fine. Hopefully it’ll be helpful for someone else.