Ubuntu Dapper Drake and WPA-Encrypted Wireless
I am a Ubuntu Linux user. On my laptop and at work, I was running “Breezy Badger” (Ubuntu Linux 5.10) since last fall.
But one of the worst things about it was its inability to connect to WPA-encrypted Wifi access points. Eventually, I wrote a few shell scripts that made me able to connect to my AP at home, but it was far from being handy.
Now yesterday, I installed the new release, Dapper Drake on my laptop. The installation was straightforward, and by the way I liked it a lot that the installation CD is a live CD at the same time so that new users can “try before they buy”.
When everything was installed, I realized that my wifi card was recognized and activated automatically, yet I was not able to connect to a WPA encrypted network. Instead it tried to connect to one of my neighbors unencrypted access points. Downgrading my connection to the demonstrably weak WEP encryption was not an option earlier, nor was it now.
Already being a little disappointed, I searched the Ubuntu forums and after a while, I came up with a thread about WPA access points with Ubuntu Dapper Drake.
In short: Nine seven steps to WPA encrypted Wifi with Ubuntu Dapper Drake:
sudo apt-get install wpasupplicant(might already be installed)- (You might have to do a
sudo apt-get updatein order to fetch the newest metadata for apt-get) sudo apt-get install network-manager-gnomesudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces— Comment out everything but “lo” entries in that fileCreate a file called/etc/default/wpasupplicant, add entryENABLED=0- Reboot your system
- Left-click the network manager icon in Gnome and select your wireless network
- Follow the prompts for password, type, etc.
- It will ask you to choose a password for your new “keyring”.
- Be happy
Now everytime you boot up and log in, the network manager will connect you to your preferred WPA-encrypted network as desired.
There are only two caveats that I currently know of:
- The connection is only made once you log into Gnome. So if you plan to run this connection on a server or if you need a network connection before you get to the login prompt (i.e. during bootup), this method is not ideal for you.
- A current bug is that you are asked for your keyring password twice (?) everytime you log in. This can be annoying, but rumor has it, it is already fixed and an update will be released soon.
As you see, Dapper Drake made a big step towards the usability of Linux on laptops. Hope you give it a shot. It seems to be worth it.
Update: Removed two unnecessary steps. Thanks, Martin and Zakaria!
I have the same problem. I can’t find Network Manager anywhere
wow. thanks. i went to the OTHER site to get this done… no luck. Thanks alot. you rock
Wow. I must say, I’m really impressed now.
I struggled with that thing for days – needless to say, without luck.
And your suggestion worked right away.
NICE work!
Awesome! That worked for me like butter
thanks.
Unfortunately your howto didnt add WPA to my system. The gnome network manager is nice, but when it prompts me to enter the network credentials, the drop-down only has the following encryption options for me: “WEP 128 Bit Passphrase”, “WEP 64/128 Bit Hex”, and “WEP 64/128 Bit ASCII” .. no options for wpa appear anywhere. When I look at running process list, wpa_supplicant is not running (and im pretty sure this needs to be running). My understanding was that the gnome-network-manager would automatically set up this stuff but maybe I’m wrong about that. Any suggestions?
I’m glad you posted this and and I’m glad Google took me to it…
I was struggling with wpa, but then what i did was make the wireless point dhcp, and make it visible, and then it worked
Followed the instructions. It doesn’t seem to work with WPA1 personal. The computer is waiting for a key to be received. However, WPA personal doesn’t get a key you supply it . I never get the second request to enter a key. Anyone know what else I need to do to get this to work or should I simply upgrade to 7.10?
Err, I don’t want to be stupid, but I just got Ubuntu and how do you “comment out” something? Like in PHP, just add // ?
Bram: That depends on the file you are editing. In config files in /etc, you usually “comment out” stuff by putting a # sign at the beginning of the respective line.
HOWEVER: I believe my instructions up here are slightly outdated, as they refer to a Ubuntu version that’s been updated three times (or so) since I wrote this. In other words: Newer Ubuntu versions should have much better wireless support out of the box and probably do not need these instructions anymore.
Either way, have fun with Ubuntu!
So much for wpa_supplicant issues! This worked great! Thanks.
This did work very well. One additional caveat is that if you have a wireless card on your laptop, that is plugged in to a PCI slot, you do not want to comment out the wireless card’s interface in the /etc/network/interfaces file. I swap an Ethernet and a wifi card alternately. Having both capable of being active relies on not commenting out either in that config file. Other than that, easy as pie!
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