Talk:WPA Manual Setting

Got our olpc from G1G1 on Dec 15, build 650. The WPA instructions do not work. There is a file created on /home/olpc/.sugar/default/nm/networks.cfg. The bssids is empty. I tried wpa_ver 2 and 4. I tried putting in AP from iwconfig on this laptop for bssids (without colons to mimic key). Our WPA access point does not show up on the neighborhood.

-- StuartGathman 23:25, 16 December 2007 (EST)

Please see the Release Notes General_Release_Notes for details on this bug. We have a fix now and should be able to release the patch to the general public in another week or so.

-- kim

Looks like it might work!

I just received my children's OLPC yesterday (2007-12-17) and my biggest disappointment was the lack of WPA support. Anyone who is serious about wireless security (which may include the vast majority of G1G1 participants!) would not use any less than WPA2 at home.

I am using an Apple Airport Extreme router which did work for me last night without encryption at all, but that's an unacceptable option. I literally put the OLPC back in the box it came in, until a solution became available. Now I am betting on the power of Linux to come through with what looks like an extremely simple fix. Will post again with the results!

-Jeff Robelen, NY

A small error

The script does not quote the passphrase before passing it to wpa_passphrase, so if it is truly a phrase and contains spaces or other shell chars, it won't work. To fix this just change the line

key=`$wpapass $ssid $pass | grep psk= | grep -v "#" | cut -d= -f 2`

to

key=`$wpapass $ssid "$pass" | grep psk= | grep -v "#" | cut -d= -f 2`

It worked!

I got it to work on my WPA network, although not before making yet a further modification to the script. You do in fact have to allow for both password and ssid to contain spaces (as mine do). Once you change

   key=`$wpapass $ssid $pass | grep psk= | grep -v "#" | cut -d= -f 2`

to

   key=`$wpapass "$ssid" "$pass" | grep psk= | grep -v "#" | cut -d= -f 2`

you are good to go!

And after playing with this system, I am ready to get another one, so both children can have one, and grow up with these. Awesome!

-Jeff

Finally Got This to Work

I tried this (with and without the suggested emendations) several times to no avail on my Airport Express (WPA2).

Looking at the script, I finally realized that (despite the instructions I had read elsewhere), it required the ASCII version of the password (which it then converts to Hex). Works great now.

--Bill Shepherd

WPA Enterprise

What about WPA Enterprise (ie. No PSK)?

--Jhulten 19:10, 19 December 2007 (EST)

WPA keys must be 10 characters or less in length

I'm leaving this tag in here, but its not correct (thanks Ivan!). ref: http://dev.laptop.org/ticket/5574

My reasoning for leaving this here is that "something" is up with the driver. Reference the bug above for details, but the short form is that any of 3 OLPCs here at work can no longer connect to our WiFi corpnet, though the only thing that changed was the passphrase.

Hmmm...

- Mark Pulver 22:10, 19 December 2007 (EST)

Didn't work for me either (Updated: now works) Just got my laptop today and tried the script method against WPAv1 Router. My passphrase is 14 chars though, so I hope I didn't hit the bug above.

When I reboot OLPC, it comes back and asks for passphrase :(

[Now Works] Ok, it works now, I think the instructions for clicking on the neighboorhood activity after reboot messed me up. It didn't connect after that, and after re-running script multiple times it inserted multiple items into config file.

I cleaned up the config file with the original info, the DID NOT go into neighboordhood and it connected fine after a bit. Please note my WPA passphrase was 14 chars. -Ivan Berg - Dec 19, 2007