| mason | Yeah. | 00:00 |
|---|---|---|
| mason | You can enter it as a hash if you don't want it sitting around plain on your computer. | 00:00 |
| mason | The wpa_passphrase command will spit out an entry for you. | 00:00 |
| Xenguy | Maybe that's the sweet spot I'm looking for. AFAIK wicd stores passwords in plaintext (I could be wrong about that) | 00:00 |
| Xenguy | Huh, nice | 00:01 |
| mason | Xenguy: check this out: https://bpa.st/FLQQ | 00:01 |
| Xenguy | Thanks for that, will look into this further | 00:01 |
| mason | Xenguy: This is why when people vehemently reject the idea I can't get it. It's hard to imagine much being simpler than that. | 00:01 |
| Xenguy | I might try experimenting with this 'in the field', er, patio : -) | 00:02 |
| mason | Xenguy: So, the scanning... If you do want to scan what's out there, "iwlist wlan0 scanning" is your boy. | 00:02 |
| mason | Can be fun seeing what's in the aether. | 00:03 |
| mason | There's also a newer "iw" tool that I assume is analogous to "ip" but just like "ip" I mostly ignore it, because the older tools just aren't broken. | 00:03 |
| Xenguy | Fascinating, so this is the low-level wireless turf : -) | 00:03 |
| mason | You can go a bit lower level, but this level is nice to use and there aren't many moving parts to worry about, so it's all fairly simple. | 00:04 |
| mason | The higher-level stuff mostly drives this stuff anyway. | 00:04 |
| Xenguy | Appreciate the leads, thanks | 00:04 |
| mason | Enjoy. You'll feel more in control of it all. | 00:05 |
| Xenguy | Yeah, and connman won't be hacking my DNS : -) | 00:06 |
| mason | If you do the mii-tool stuff, please pay careful attention to the argument to grep. For wired, you don't want to run if there's "no link" on the wired interface. For wifi, you only want to run if there's "no link" on the wired interface. -qv vs -q | 00:07 |
| Xenguy | Huh | 00:07 |
| rwp | For manual scanning with the newer tools I use "sudo iw dev wlan0 scan | less" or "sudo iw dev wlan0 scan | grep SSID.." | 00:08 |
| mason | rwp: So, that makes it look analogous to ip...? | 00:09 |
| Xenguy | rwp, You too -- it's a cult! | 00:09 |
| rwp | Yes. iw and ip are similar vintage. | 00:09 |
| mason | Xenguy: Don't let people convince you that a GUI is always the easiest thing to do. | 00:09 |
| Xenguy | mason, When they try to get too smart, then they just complicate matters | 00:10 |
| mason | Yep. | 00:10 |
| mason | Xenguy: https://youtu.be/T2NsTi_43g4 | 00:11 |
| rwp | Actually I should have had a : in that grep SSID:.. section. That scrapes out the hidden nodes that don't want connections to them. | 00:12 |
| rwp | Using ifupdown for 24x7 connected devices is definitely the most reliable. Solid. Works great. | 00:13 |
| rwp | However I do like picking from a selection of available and wicd has been my go-to utility for that on laptops. | 00:13 |
| mason | What's it gain functionally over what I presented? :P | 00:13 |
| Xenguy | rwp, These days I just use ethernet at home, so I've been using ifup/down too, via DHCP, and it works just fine | 00:14 |
| rwp | mason, Honestly I wasn't paying close attention. But do you mean https://bpa.st/DDQA ? For 24x7 connected devices that's perfect. <thumbs up> | 00:15 |
| rwp | Although I tend to use "ethtool" instead of "mii-tool". Same thing though. Same thing. | 00:16 |
| mason | rwp: ifdown wlan0 and ifup wlan0 still work fine - what's 24x7 about it? | 00:16 |
| Xenguy | mason, That may be a tad too Scottish for me ; -P | 00:16 |
| mason | Maybe the issue is that I have to be at a terminal. =ponders= | 00:17 |
| Xenguy | Something about plumbing | 00:17 |
| mason | I'm always at a terminal. | 00:17 |
| rwp | mason, I mean not randomly different. Not being a mobile laptop connecting to whatever coffee shop or airport or whatever WiFi AP that I might need to connect to. | 00:17 |
| mason | rwp: wpa_supplicant.conf lets you specify a range of networks, prioritize them, and then connect to something open if there are none of your preferred networks there... | 00:18 |
| rwp | With wicd I just open the dialog with it (gtk or curses, both are the same) and it displays a list with signal strength and encryption status. I select. Done. | 00:18 |
| mason | Mm. | 00:18 |
| mason | So it's more work, but you're saying there's an advantage? | 00:18 |
| mason | I just want to make sure I understand. :P | 00:19 |
| rwp | But I am okay with running ``wpa_supplicant -D nl80211,wext -i wlan0 -c <(wpa_passphrase "your_SSID" "your_key")'' to set things up and then connect using it too. It's just more work. | 00:19 |
| mason | Ew. That's like the worst of both worlds. Why would you want to do it that way? | 00:20 |
| rwp | Why would I want to do it using wpa_supplicant? In order to have it encode the passphrase for me. But I think you have my opinion flipped. Using wpa directly is the hard way. | 00:21 |
| rwp | Using wicd is the easy way. | 00:21 |
| mason | You didn't read my paste I don't think. | 00:21 |
| mason | Well, keep on using wicd I guess. It's all about choice! | 00:22 |
| rwp | Your paste shows that you have used root to edit /etc/network/interfaces to set up the information I generated using wpa_passphrase into the file manually. | 00:22 |
| mason | rwp: I won't endeavor to teach someone smarter than me how to use their computer. You're right. I concede. | 00:22 |
| rwp | Also editing /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf manually to do the configuration. | 00:22 |
| mason | wicd4eva | 00:22 |
| rwp | I apologize. I wasn't trying to win. It's not supposed to be a competition. But I am rather obstinant sometimes. | 00:23 |
| rwp | I was simply trying to share the different ways that are possible to do things. And I think using wpa directly is the best way for non-dynamic (I'll avoid saying static) setups. | 00:24 |
| Xenguy | If I could continue to just use wicd, I would, out of laziness. But come Chimaera, well... | 00:24 |
| rwp | Like those that are always connecting to the house WiFi AP and so forth. | 00:24 |
| rwp | Also I can show grandma how to pick their WiFi AP SSID from a dialog list and select it. It's an interface for everyone. | 00:26 |
| rwp | But I can't succeed trying to teach grandma that she needs to become root with either su or sudo, edit the /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf file, and edit or add entries for the coffee shop WiF SSID and passphrase that she wants to connect to today for the next five minutes. | 00:27 |
| rrq | wpa-gui ? | 00:33 |
| Xenguy | That looks familiar, hrm | 00:34 |
| mason | ah, package is wpagui | 00:35 |
| Xenguy | wpagui - graphical user interface for wpa_supplicant | 00:35 |
| mason | never seen that before - I'll have to look now | 00:35 |
| Xenguy | rrq, It's coming back to me, you mentioned that previously | 00:35 |
| rrq | yes, my escape from wicd landed on ifupdown and wpagui | 00:36 |
| Xenguy | aha, very nice | 00:36 |
| mason | So, people seem to like wicd. What's the issue with it in Chimaera? | 00:36 |
| Xenguy | python2 I think? | 00:37 |
| golinux | python2 | 00:37 |
| mason | Ah. :( | 00:37 |
| Xenguy | Or am I confusing it with something else? | 00:37 |
| mason | Yeah, there's no fixing that without a rewrite then. | 00:37 |
| golinux | Are you volunteering? | 00:37 |
| Xenguy | That kind of 'no backward compatibility' drives me a bit crazy, but I hardly know the internals | 00:37 |
| mason | golinux: Nah, I really dislike Python in all its incarnations. | 00:38 |
| Xenguy | mason, You're not the only one from what I gather : -) | 00:40 |
| fluffywolf | python is never forward or backwards compatible. | 00:41 |
| Xenguy | Damn you python | 00:43 |
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