wpa_gui and wpa_supplicant how to? SOLVED

[Moderator BobC]

Looking at control center at what options I have for how to connect to the internet:

I know how to work ceni, and its memory efficient, but everytime I go anywhere I need to connect manually

I know how to work wicd but it takes a bunch of memory and I would need to modify startup files someplace to get it to start without needing to run the control center app to get it going after each time I boot up.

I think I really want to use wpa_supplicant, which seems to run something called wpa_gui for wpa_supplicant, but if you click it, but it doesn’t show any adapter or network and says “Could not get status from wpa_supplicant”

When I run iwconfig I see wlan0 listed and info filled in

When I run wpa_cli -iwlan0 status I see my connection info there

If I ping a site it works.

Therefore, I don’t understand why wpa_gui comes up blank. Scan comes up empty also…

And my big question is: If I get wpa_gui and wpa_supplicant working will it be able to automatically connect to networks it has seen before or will I need to reconfigure it manually every time like with ceni? If it will automatically connect, please tell me how to get it working or direct me to someplace that will…

Thanks for any info or links

• This topic was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by BobC.

[Anonymous]

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xref: WIP topic in “Documentation” subforum, titled “managing-network-connections-ceni-or-wicd-or…”
TODO: copy any useful info gleaned from this topic, into the WIP “managing network connections” documentation topic

I’ve never used it, so I checked online: filelist: package “wpasupplicant”
and found that its package installs several working examples (see: /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/examples/*.conf ) as well manpages.
man wpa_supplicant
man wpa_supplicant.conf
man wpa_action
man wpa_background
man wpa_cli
man wpa_passphrase

[Anonymous]

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You have not mentioned whether your system is antiX16 or antix17 or…
but I recall reading that the antiX17 (and MX Linux 17) releases were delayed due to the devs wrestling with the upstream “network manglement” components shipped in debian9.
I can’t recall whether wpa_supplicant, specifically, was problematic.

[Moderator BobC]

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Thanks for the replies, Skidoo.

The machine I’m working on is my Dell XPS 15-7559 with pathetic Windoze 10, the big fast SSD (with Linus repos), UEFI and nasty Intel/nVidia 3840×2160 video. It’s lightning fast with 8 processors and 16gb but difficult to get things working. I’m running AntiX17 Full AMD64 version using the 4.8.10 AntiX Sid Kernel because the default Kernel couldn’t resume from suspend, and I didn’t know if I should use the GNU or AntiX version of the Sid Kernel.

The problem appears either that the configuration isn’t in the folder where wpa_gui can find it, or that antixcc.sh is calling wpa_gui with no parameters, causing it to come up empty.

wpa_gui -iwlan0

works just fine, but the “Configure wpa_supplicant” icon in the control center comes up empty

Unfortunately I only have the one wifi network here to test with at the moment, so can’t tell if it can handle others without losing my home setup.

[Anonymous]

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or that antixcc.sh is calling wpa_gui with no parameters

Yes, we can see here that controlCenter does not pass any parameters.
I don’t know how that should be solved. It would be undesirable to specify a hardcoded “-iwlan0” as a commandline argument, right?
(like… whatif it’s iwlan1, or other, that the user wishes to configure?)

[Moderator BobC]

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Yes, I agree, the wifi port could possibly be named differently,and I wouldn’t know if that is controlled by AntiX or the user, since I’ve noticed it gets different names especially under different repos.

Unfortunately, my testing broke all wifi capability (ie wlan0 no longer appears anywhere), and I can’t get it working at all again. The same drivers appear connected in lspci, but nothing works anymore, not even ceni. I am able to boot from the flash and it complains about firmware, but ceni does work that way. It looks like my only choice is to reload from scratch yet again.

I tried a few times to fix it, but I don’t know enough, and all the notes I put in the old forum are gone now, many, many hours of research and documenting thinking it would be useful for myself or others lost completely. Never trust the internet for anything is the lesson, I guess.

Can you tell me if wpa_gui and wpa_supplicant would automatically remember and connect to multiple networks if I was able to actually get it to work (maybe via command line or personal menu since the control center one doesn’t). That would be an acceptable solution.

Thanks for your help and sorry it all turned to mud.

[Forum Admin dolphin_oracle]

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I think wpa_gui will keep multile profiles, but its a manual process to switch.

wicd (just the dameon) can be set to automatically connect to any already configured network . its not that heavy. you don’t need the tray icon for it to work.

just edit /etc/default/wicd and change the “START_DAEMON=NO” to “START_DAEMON=YES”. reboot and done.

also, if you are running on a live-USB, then there is a command line switch for “wicd” to enable that.

[Moderator BobC]

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It took quite a bit of effort for a lamer like me, but I was able to reinstall on a different partition, and configure /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf to use wpa_supplicant and roam (by finding some code for roaming wpa_supplicant on the net), and now I can use wpa_gui to add other networks as it’s intended, and not use up any extra memory for wicd. I don’t have the little wicd or wpa_gui icon to tell me the wifi status, but it’s not worth the memory use to me.

I don’t think wpa_gui was happy with not having a /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf file, and maybe that’s why it was confused, because it works ok, now.

If anyone is interested, I can post the files (without my network ids or passwords) so anyone could use the setup. I kind of wonder why its not setup that way to begin with, but don’t know enough to know what reasons there might be not to.

Thanks for the suggestions and links…

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by BobC.

[Moderator BobC]

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https://xrunhprof.wordpress.com/2009/09/19/setup-wpa_gui-and-roaming-on-debian/

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=27573

Added /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf example files of very memory efficient roaming wifi with wpa_supplicant and wpa_gui without loading wicd or tray icons.

interfaces

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# /etc/network/interfaces
#
# interfaces(5) file used by ifup(8) and ifdown(8)
# Used by ceni but not by wicd
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug eth2
iface eth2 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug eth3
iface eth3 inet dhcp

# Code added for roaming wpa_supplicant & wpa_gui
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet manual
	wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
iface default inet dhcp

wpa_supplicant.conf

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

network={
	ssid="myhomewifi"
	psk="myhomepassword"
	proto=RSN
	key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
	pairwise=CCMP
	auth_alg=OPEN
}

network={
	ssid="unsecure"
	key_mgmt=NONE
	priority=5
	disabled=1
	id_str="unsecure"
}

network={
	ssid="Comfort Inn Guest"
	key_mgmt=NONE
	priority=10
	disabled=1
}

network={
	ssid="SleepInn"
	key_mgmt=NONE
	priority=10
	disabled=1
}

• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by BobC.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by BobC.
• This reply was modified 5 years, 4 months ago by BobC.

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1. interfaces.txt

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