Re: Wireless roaming/configuration
On Sun, Apr 02, 2006 at 07:41:10PM -0700, Z F wrote:
> Hello everybody,
>
> I can not seem to figure out how to configure wireless roaming.
> That is, I would like to describe several networks with their WEP keys
> and
> ESSIDs. The goal is that as soon as available network is detected a
> connection is made.
Should be doable.
> It seems to me that waproamd is the right package for the job. Never
> the less, I can not seem to make it work. waproamd gives me this error:
>
> SIOCGIWRANGE failed: Argument list too longShutdown
I apologise, I don't have any experience with this program.
> I also noticed that latest wireless tools available are v17. However,
> the kernel 2.6.13 provides v18 support. It is not clear if v18 is
> backwards compatible with v17 and if this could be aproblem.
The kernel provides Wireless Extensions (wext) 18, which is different
than wireless-tools version number, but even oldstable has version 23 so
I'm not sure that's what you're talking about. Are you running stable,
testing, or unstable?
> Also, I saw on waproamd web site that it has been superceeded by
> wpa_supplicant. This uses WPA and WPA2 method. But I have WEP so what
> should I do? What are the options?
You can use wpa_supplicant for WEP. I do. What I did was make the
key-mgmt NONE and set wep_key0 XXXX instead of WPA-PSK or the like.
> One last point, I do not have KDE or GNOME installed. Do I need them
> for
> the wireless configuration or it is possible to do it without it?
It's quite possible to do it from the command line (how I did it), or
perhaps there's apps in GNOME or KDE to do it, I don't know about
them--I just editted /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf and
/etc/networking/interfaces by hand.
> Thanks for your input
To get at your initial question, to choose different networks in
wpa_supplicant, you can just list them in /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf in
your desired order and they will be tried one after another until one
works or they all fail.
Here's a snippet of my /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf:
network={
ssid="example"
bssid=XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX
scan_ssid=0
key_mgmt=NONE
auth_alg=SHARED
wep_key0=XXXXXXXX
wep_tx_keyidx=0
}
If you're using unstable's, there's more that's involved in getting
/etc/wpa_supplicant read -- /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/README.modes
explains it, or ask.
--
Christopher Nelson -- chris@cavein.org
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