Dealing with WPA on Linux

snarkout · Post by **snarkout** » Mon Sep 18, 2006 6:58 pm

To get network manager to work under (K)ubuntu I had to comment/delete all of my interfaces from /etc/network/interfaces except the loopback. Don't ask me why. That's a shame frugal's wpa is such a pita - so far I've been finding it a great distro - an amazing number of packages for such a small distro, and it does "just enough" for me. The install was a real frigging bummer though, I have to say.

schotty · Post by **schotty** » Mon Sep 18, 2006 7:54 pm

Well I guess it depends on what NIC you have. My Atheros one is great on all distros, easiest on Fedora and Ubuntu I think. Worst on SuSE for some reason. I expect SuSE to fix it by next release or maybe in SLED 10. Atheros is pretty major in the WiFi world.

Theres a list of WiFi cards and their respective support on linux as a whole. I would refer to that and see what yours can handle, and if its not worth it or capable to do so, just go get a card that is supported.

There are a slim few wireless chipsets out there, so the few that work make a whole army of cards magically work. So just hunt around for one that is and you are golden. Or run OpenBSD. Their wireless support rocks (they dont need to cleanroom reverse engineer the drivers as Linux does).

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 12:08 am

schotty wrote:My Atheros one is great on all distros, easiest on Fedora and Ubuntu I think.

Fedora does not include the Madwifi driver, you have to download it from a community repository, Ubuntu does include, however we may be speaking GPL violation here.

schotty wrote:Worst on SuSE for some reason. I expect SuSE to fix it by next release or maybe in SLED 10. Atheros is pretty major in the WiFi world.

The Atheros driver for Linux, madwifi, is partly proprietary.
Novell (SUSE) used to include the driver, which you'll see if you download the version of 10.0 that has proprietary add-ons included, but they got some angry letters from kernel hackers that felt that they were infringing on their GPL copyrights, Novell respects that so they removed all proprietary drivers from their distribution, and came up with a new mechanism that makes it easy for end-users to install drivers.

To get an Atheros card going on SUSE, you just need to add http://madwifi.org/suse to whatever package manager you're using and install madwifi and madwifi-kmp-<kernel flavor>

(kernel flavor = default, smp or bigsmp)

The driver should automatically get loaded, if it doesn't, just load it manually with modprobe madwifi, and then open up YaST, go into Network Devices and then Network Card, it should now see your Atheros card and you can easily set it all up and, bam, done deal!

schotty wrote:Or run OpenBSD. Their wireless support rocks (they dont need to cleanroom reverse engineer the drivers as Linux does).

The idea of OpenBSD having better wireless support than Linux is quote facinating to me, because wireless you'd mostly associatate with a desktop computer, and OpenBSD has long had a false reputation for not being usable as a desktop OS, which it actually is, I run it on my PowerPC-powered Mac mini, works great!

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 1:30 am

Tsuroerusu wrote:The idea of OpenBSD having better wireless support than Linux is quote facinating to me, because wireless you'd mostly associatate with a desktop computer, and OpenBSD has long had a false reputation for not being usable as a desktop OS, which it actually is, I run it on my PowerPC-powered Mac mini, works great!

Since when does OpenBSD have better wireless support than Linux? The driver for Intel Pro Wireless chipsets found in Centrino notebooks is not even in development anymore, and OpenBSD does not support WPA encryption according to the project's web page, which is quite ironic.

http://damien.bergamini.free.fr/ipw/download.html

Tsuroerusu · Post by **Tsuroerusu** » Tue Sep 19, 2006 7:15 am

Wally Balljacker wrote:
Tsuroerusu wrote:The idea of OpenBSD having better wireless support than Linux is quote facinating to me, because wireless you'd mostly associatate with a desktop computer, and OpenBSD has long had a false reputation for not being usable as a desktop OS, which it actually is, I run it on my PowerPC-powered Mac mini, works great!
Since when does OpenBSD have better wireless support than Linux? The driver for Intel Pro Wireless chipsets found in Centrino notebooks is not even in development anymore, and OpenBSD does not support WPA encryption according to the project's web page, which is quite ironic.

http://damien.bergamini.free.fr/ipw/download.html

Maybe I should clarify it a little bit, in terms of device driver support, and the amount of chipsets they support, especially out of the box, it seems to me that OpenBSD has better support, now having said that, they lack features such as the ones you mention, but OpenBSD development is a lot more of an evolutionary process, than revolutionary, as they focus so tightly on security.

schotty · Post by **schotty** » Wed Sep 20, 2006 8:54 pm

Tsuroerusu wrote: Maybe I should clarify it a little bit, in terms of device driver support, and the amount of chipsets they support, especially out of the box, it seems to me that OpenBSD has better support, now having said that, they lack features such as the ones you mention, but OpenBSD development is a lot more of an evolutionary process, than revolutionary, as they focus so tightly on security.

Exactly.

With regards to the previous comments, I have found that most of the time you do need to go out and acquire a driver module, so as long as one does exist I am happy. You are most correct on madwifi, and thats what I use, and am VERY HAPPY with it. As for proprietary or not, I could care less if its of decent quality. Thats why I chose linux, better kernel and OS design over Windows. As long as the hardware runs well (stable) and allows me to do what the hardware was designed to do, cool beans, I am pleased.

But you are right on the non free BS that cropped up. To me if its a driver, a link or the driver should be included if the vendor doesnt care about redistributing the software. But then again, thats why the kernel devs would hate me (and probably do). My idealology is not dead on with theirs.

Oh well. My choice ;D

Wally Balljacker · Post by **Wally Balljacker** » Sat Sep 23, 2006 2:32 am

Snarkout wrote:To get network manager to work under (K)ubuntu I had to comment/delete all of my interfaces from /etc/network/interfaces except the loopback. Don't ask me why.

That's what I had to do. I've since installed Edgy on my laptop, and NetworkManager is working again, but WPA is still a little flakey, just like it was on Dapper. Sometimes it takes a LONG time to connect to my wireless network, and occasionally it will continue to ask for my password over and over again in an endless loop, never establishing a connection. I'm hoping that they sort this stuff out before Edgy is released, and include NetworkManager out of the box, because WiFi on Linux isn't anywhere near as good as it should be.