Re: Where are WiFi passwords (WPA keys) stored?
On 12/06/2016 09:04 AM, Robert Latest wrote:
> Not in /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf, despite suggestions in
> every bit of documentation that I got my hands on. In fact, that file
> doesn't even exist on my jessie system. Nevertheless, when I
> configured the WiFi network using some GUI tool in the XFCE desktop,
> it worked.
Disclaimer: I'm not a user of XFCE, so if that does something
really weird, this may not apply.
However, most graphical tools interface with NetworkManager, and
that stores its configuration in /etc/NetworkManager.
You'll likely find your password stored in
/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/$SSID
(file only readable/writable as root; also please don't modify it
while NetworkManager is running, it will overwrite it without
warning; modifying it when NetworkManager is stopped is fine
though)
where you replace $SSID with the SSID of your WiFi.
On some desktops (e.g. GNOME) the Password can be stored in the
personal user's keyring/wallet/password manager instead, but
then you need to be logged in for NetworkManager to have access
to the password - which is not true in your case because you
mentioned:
> Even after a reboot, with no desktop running, I could ssh
> into the system via WiFi.
So that means that NetworkManager has the password stored
directly.
Note that when using NetworkManager, it configures its own
instance of wpa_supplicant, so you should never touch a
configuration file for wpa_supplicant yourself in this kind of
setup.
(You could of course stop using NetworkManager and configure
wpa_supplicant manually, but I really wouldn't recommend that;
I don't think wpa_supplicant is designed in a way that makes
direct end-user usage easy - there's a reason why NetworkManager
exists instead of desktop environments communicating directly
with wpa_supplicant.)
> BTW, I did find a wpa_supplicant.conf file in some deep subdir of
> /etc/dbus-1/...
That's just the DBus policy, that doesn't configure how
wpa_supplicant reacts, but only how the DBus daemon handles
the access policy for wpa_supplicant. (DBus is a communication
bus used on Linux and other systems; most desktop envirnoments,
including XFCE, use it internally for some things.) Unless you
know what you're doing, I wouldn't touch that, otherwise you
could end up stopping NetworkManager from communicating with
wpa_supplicant and then your WiFi could stop working altogether.
Regards,
Christian
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