Royal College of Anaesthetists

Linux at the RCOA

I had a bit of problem gettting my linux laptop to associate with the RCOA WPA-d network.

eth1 is my wireless card.

wpa_supplicant -ieth1  -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -dd -Dwext

is the command line to watch the card try and connect

Ive got my network cards waiting for 20 seconds to get a DHCP address. Your wpa network needs longer than this . With a short association time in the cafe it picks up one of the neighbouring unsecured networks. set at 45 seconds, it was OK

my /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf file was like this

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ap_scan=1
network={
  ssid="rcoa"
  psk="xxxxxx"
  priority=1
 proto=WPA
  key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
  pairwise=TKIP
  group=CCMP TKIP WEP104 WEP40
}

although I had told it to associate with rcoa network, ap_scan=o failed to connect and it needed ap_scan=1

the relevant bits of the interfaces config file ended up as

modules_eth1=( "wpa_supplicant" )
wpa_supplicant_eth1=( "-Dwext" )
dhcpcd_eth1="-t 45 -N"
essid_eth1=( "rcoa" )

and then start the dhcpcd client

dhcpcd eth1

Added by Grant on 23-Oct 2008 As a non-expert Linux user, I found the following GUI tool really useful : https://launchpad.net/wicd Wicd is an open-source wireless configuration utility for Linux. After faffing about for three days trying to connect my Acer laptop to a WPA-protected WiFi AP, I had it working in 2 minutes using WiCD.