Re: [PLUG] ubuntu and wpa wireless - semi/mostly solved

[Mike Leone <turgon@mike-leone.com>]

chrisb@kippona.com wrote:
> On 3 Aug 2006, Mike Leone <turgon@mike-leone.com> wrote: 
>
> > Which did diddly for me, as I had to issue it manually. I tried :
> >
> > iface ath0 inet dhcp
> >   pre-up wpa_supplicant -B -iath0 -Dmadwifi
> >   down skill wpa_supplicant
> >
> > in /etc/network/interfaces, which did the same (i.e., nothing).
> >
> > So what am I missing now, to get this to happen automatically?
>
> This works for me on Knoppix:
>
> 1. wpa_passphrase <your_ssid> <your_passphrase> > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
> 2. chmod 640 /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
> 3. wpa_supplicant -Bw -Dmadwifi -iath0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
> 4. pump -i ath0

Yeah, that's pretty much what I'm doing (altho I may have forgotten the 
chmod); I'd just like to automate it. Can't figure out where in the boot 
process it isn't working, nor how to easily add it as a last step before 
the login prompt happens.

> HTH.
>
> By the way, Winders has become very stable, and Linux a PITA on
> the desktop for me.

I hear ya. :-(

> I mostly using linux via screen via putty/ssh.  Emacs in
> putty/ssh, too.

Yep; mostly I read email remotely using mutt over putty/ssh using 
screen. A great thing, screen - I remember Darxus raving about it once.

> It's a shame linux got nowhere with laptop vendors.  Knoppix is
> all there is.

I figured that since I had kubuntu going, I'd try and watch some AVI 
files across my LAN. Nope; no DivX codec. No binary that I could find 
(well, nothing official). Installed the w32codecs package, which is 
supposed to contain it; still won't play. (and not sure if I chose the 
right debian-multimedia.org repository, since mplayer installation 
complained of many broken packages, when I thought I'd install that 
(which should play anything under Linux).

Then I installed Thunderbird to read my IMAP email; on Linux, apparently 
there's a bug, where you can't copy and paste using Thunderbird. A real 
aggravation (which I'm sure will be fixed at some point). And I don't 
quite like Kontact/Kmail, and installing Evolution wanted to drag in way 
too much Gnome stuff, just to read email. I coulda used mutt, but after 
all the aggravation to get a decent GUI-oriented distribution installed, 
I didn't feel like staying at the command line to read email (altho I 
prefer to install packages that way). I didn't even try reading my 
Camera RAW files.

So I booted back into WinXP and watched my stuff, and answered some 
email. I'll get back to the kubuntu later. Linux is great for servers; 
not for desktops yet, I don't think.

But if anyone can help with the WPA daemon issue, or the other things I 
came across, I'd love to hear about it.
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