RE: laptop wireless setup, wpa_supplicant.conf, driver ipw not supported? CLI only

[keitho@strucktower.com]

Thank you Brian and Raf-

I learned several things from both of you, and I really appreciate it :-)
It took me several hours with your help- without your help I would still
be struggling with it.

Turns out, Brian was right to warn me about making sure I was using the
correct interface- I was not. Turns out that the wireless is eth1, not
eth0.

I have it working now with the wext driver- it would not work with the
nl80211 driver.

I can confirm that the wpa_supplicant.conf file is not needed in this very
simple setup. Thanks Raf for confirming that I will need it for setting up
roaming (when I get to that).

I'd like to ask one more question, not sure if I should start a new thread
for it since it is related to debugging the situation:

If I boot the machine with the Ethernet connected, the system uses that
connection via eth0. If I unplug the Ethernet I then can't get the
wireless to work unless I reboot. I have tried:

/etc/init.d/networking stop|start as well as ifdown eth1 ifup eth1

but still the wireless doesn't connect. How do I "reset" it or somehow
configure the system to use the wireless subsequent to having the Ethernet
pulled out, without rebooting the system?

Thanks,
Keith

> On Fri, Oct 28, 2011 at 09:46:25AM BST, Brian wrote:
>> As Raf Czlonka has already said, using /etc/network/interfaces and its
>> integration with wpa_supplicant is the way to go. You do not even need a
>> wpa_supplicant.conf file.
>
> You don't, for simple setup that is indeed enough.
> If you have several wireless networks you can keep your interfaces file
> tidy and organised, not to mention that roaming mode won't work without
> wpa_supplicant.conf file.
>
>>    iface eth0 inet dhcp
>> 	   wpa-ssid myssid
>>    	   wpa-psk passphrase
>
> I also recommend actual PSK rather than passphrase.
>
> man wpa_passphrase.
>
> Regards,
> --
> Raf
>