wpa supplicant and ndiswrapper to enable wpa2 aes

[ludfic]

Hi

I am trying to enable wpa2 aes encryption on fedora. The wifi access was working fine with WEP and system-config-network but recently somebody hacked into my network and I had to switch back to wpa2 aes encryption. Looking at previous posts, I can see that a lot of people have used wpa supplicant and ndiswrapper to enable this. A post from 2006 even explains how to enable this: http://www.fedoraforum.org/forum/showthread.php?t=93054

Using Add/Remove software, I have installed wpa_gui and ndiswrapper kernel module, but it doesn't work. I don't see my wlan0 in wpa_gui.

Has anybody got wpa2 aes working on fedora?

Thanks
Linux fedoralinux 2.6.27.19-170.2.35.fc10.i686
KDE

[stoat]

Hello ludfic,

I'm not sure I can help much here, but a couple of things that you said puzzled me. For example, ndiswrapper is software that makes a wireless driver for Windows work in Linux. It's not really directly related to encryption. And that wpa_gui package is apparently just a graphic front-end for wpa_supplicant. It's nice to look at, but I wouldn't expect it to solve anything.

Some things to think about:

If you were connected with WEP before, then your wireless card is now known to work with whatever driver that you had installed. True, some Linux drivers have deficiencies vis-a-vis encryption in general and WPA in particular. But there is still a chance that your existing driver will still work for you with WPA.

Next, you can go ahead and try to set up the wpa_supplicant related config files (manually or with wpa_gui), but I use WPA encryption and let NetworkManager handle all of that stuff nowadays. I don't configure anything anymore. And I don't enter anything in the old Network Configuration utility (system-config-network). Not for a while now. I just get my driver ready, and NM finds my network. Not everybody agrees or has been as fortunate as me with NM. But did you try connecting with your existing driver and NetworkManager? I would try it.

[BlueC]

ludfic, what wireless card do you have? what driver are you using for it?

[ludfic]

Thanks both for replying.

To stoat: I did try wpa with NM when I installed Fedora 10 for the first time but it didn't work for me. This thread explains what I did: http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=214022

Could you please help me setup wpa_supplicant related config files and network manager? I want to do that manually. Would really appreciate it.

To BlueC: I am using out of the out of the box default driver for my Edimax RT73 usb stick.

[ludfic]

Well! What can I say! I enabled Network Manager through system-config-services. It appeared on the bottom right of my screen and showed me my network. I selected it; entered my passphrase and now I am connected using WPA2 AES encryption and sending this message. I don't know why it is working now and didn't work when I installed fedora. The only thing different now, apart from installing ndiswrapper and wpa_gui (both irrelevant to this problem), is that I entered the following text in wpa_supplicant.conf:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=wheel
ap_scan=2
opensc_engine_path=/usr/lib/opensc/engine_opensc.so
pkcs11_engine_path=/usr/lib/opensc/engine_pkcs11.so
pkcs11_module_path=/usr/lib/pkcs11/opensc-pkcs11.so
update_config=1

network={
ssid="any"
key_mgmt=NONE
disabled=1
}

Maybe that's what was missing before. wpa_gui is still not showing any network interface or my wireless network. I don't care about that.

If my connection keeps working then three cheers for Network Manager!
Thanks again for replying.