Re: LUG: Wi-Fi help. - Mon, 08 Jan 2018 11:13:54 -0500

Subject : Re: LUG: Wi-Fi help.

From : Jeffery Mewtamer <mewtamer@gmail.[redacted]>

Date : Mon, 08 Jan 2018 11:13:54 -0500

Personally, I favor using wired connections whenever possible, and
have been successfully managing ethernet connections via ifupdown for
the last few years. Only reason I'm trying to learn how to do Wi-Fi
under Linux is because I find myself in a situation where I'm without
Ethernet access for most of the week and must either learn or continue
trying to squeeze a week's worth of Internet activity into less than
48 hours.

Anyways, someone on one of the other mailing lists I sent the original
message to provided the solution. In a nutshell, I needed to add the
line to invoke wpa_supplicant to my /etc/network/interfaces file.

On 1/8/18, Quentin Young <qlyoung@ncsu.[redacted]> wrote:
> Jeffrey,
>
> As with everything in Linux, some people are purists about using
> wpa_supplicant directly and configuring everything yourself. I personally
> lean towards having my wifi work. To that end I suggest you install the
> GNOME project utility named NetworkManager and let that program handle
> things. It generally does not require any configuration out of the box.
> Normally it places a little icon in your tray (if you are in a graphical
> environment) that works similar to the Windows or macOS wifi selectors.
> However there are also a couple of text mode interfaces bundled with it, one
> of them a traditional cli utility called “nmcli” and the other in ncurses
> called “nmtui”. Both of these are fairly easy to use.
>
> I apologize for the non-answer with respect to wpa_supplicant, if you still
> want to go that route someone else is probably better equipped to help.
>
> Quentin
>
>
>> On Jan 7, 2018, at 5:15 PM, Jeffery Mewtamer <mewtamer@gmail.[redacted]> wrote:
>>
>> Following the guide at
>> https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/wireless/wireless-cli.md,
>> I successfully got my Raspberry Pi 3 running a near stock Raspbian
>> Stretch Lite connected to my wireless network. Copying
>> /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf and running wpa_cli -i wlan0
>> reconfigure, I repeated this on my Raspbery Pi 2 using a USB Wi-Fi
>> dongle without any effort.
>>
>> Now, I'm trying to repeat this on a desktop that has Wi-Fi onboard
>> with much less success. I installed wpasupplicant and wireless-tools
>> via Aptitude, copied over the wpa_supplicant.conf file, and ran
>> wpa_cli -i wlan0 reconfigure to recieve the following error message:
>>
>> Failed to connect to non-global ctrl_ifname: wlan0 error: No such
>> file or directory
>>
>> And running iwconfig produces the following output:
>>
>> wlan0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:off/any
>> Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=0 dBm
>> Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
>> Power Management:off
>>
>> Neither of which is all that helpful, especially since the above
>> mentioned successes with Raspberry Pis are the only successes I've
>> ever had connecting a Linux machine to a wireless network.
>>
>> So, any ideas as to what I'm doing wrong?
>> --
>> Sincerely,
>>
>> Jeffery Wright
>> President Emeritus, Nu Nu Chapter, Phi Theta Kappa.
>> Former Secretary, Student Government Association, College of the
>> Albemarle.
>
>
>

--
Sincerely,

Jeffery Wright
President Emeritus, Nu Nu Chapter, Phi Theta Kappa.
Former Secretary, Student Government Association, College of the Albemarle.