For months now I have been trying to get my laptop running linux to connect to my school's wireless network. This is the last barrier to my mostly ditching MS. I can, BTW, connect to the campus wireless network just fine under Windows. Here is what I know so far.

I can connect just fine to my home wireless network, which uses WPA-PSK, simply using the Mandrake's wireless configuration tool (MCC). After selecting the proper info in MCC, it appears that it wrote a network block to the wpa_supplicant.conf file and all was working fine.

I have never gotten a connection at all on campus however, which uses WPA-TKIP with PEAP (MSCHAPv2).

Now my troubleshooting has been fraught with confusion. First, it seems that the MCC tools do not recognize TKIP at all. PSK is the only option I can select using that tool. Attempts to manually add a network block to wpa_supplicant.conf have failed. I may not be using the proper parameters as I certainly don't fully understand it all.

Here is a typical block I have tried to add:

network={
ssid="CWWPA"
key_mgmt=IEEE8021X //as you will see below, this option is checked but grayed out in my MS Windows config, don't know if that means it is being used or not
eap=PEAP
phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
identity="user name"
password="password"
ca_cert="/etc/cert/ca.pem" //got this from an example on the web, not sure what it is about so don't know if I should change it
}

However, it is possible that my problems are more than just getting the config file correct. When I try to use wpa_gui, the term window that opens with it stalls on something like "trying to access
/var/run/wpa_supplicant/atho" and the gui displays and just forever says "scanning." I have verified that there is a file called ath0 in the above mentioned location, but what wpa_supplicant is trying to do with it and why it is failing is beyond me (though I do know that is the correct designation for my wireless card).

Finally, here are all the settings I can glean from my working windows config.

Network Authentication: WPA
Data Encryption: TKIP
SSID; CWWPA
EAP Type: Protected EAP (PEAP)
Enable IEEE 802.1x Authentication box is checked, but grayed out
Authentication method: Secured Password (EAP-MSCHAPv2)

If you want more details on the windows setup, here is the link to my school's website to explains windows setup. http://campuswide.cofc.edu/PEAP%20wi...20Pack%202.pdf

On windows, my username and password are apparently stored somewhere, as after entering it for the very first time I never had to again. I also can find nothing in windows that seems to indicate where any authentication certificate is stored (like the last line in my wpa block above) so I can't gleen any useful info with regards to that.

So, any help is greatly appreciated. I don't mind RTFM, as long as someone can direct my efforts (I have already read a lot on this, but I have not been able to put it all together into a full understanding).

RKS

I did a little googling, and I came up with this link, with a possible solution.

http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/sus...suse-10-a.html

I looked and wpa_supplicant is available fopr Mandriva 2006.

Since your card works at home, drivers etc have to be correct. I would suspect it is a config issue with your school.

Thanks, Cliff, for the reply. But am I missing something? The only solution that I gleaned from the link you posted is to install wpa_supplicant, which is what I am already using (as in the portion of its config file that I posted in my OP). Just wondering if there was something else I was supposed to see in that thread that I was too dense to see.

Again, thanks, for the reply.

RKS

Sorry, I didn't realise you had wpa_supplicant installed. I'm no expert here.

I did some further reading, including looking at your campus document. Sure is a shame they support stuff like W98 and ME, and they don't support something like a secure linux distro.

Have a look here. http://mandrivausers.org/ I did a search on wpa_supplicant and turned up several people battling with it. I didn't read through every post, but you may find the peice of information that is not obvious to get you going. There is an interesting post by someone using Arch Linux - http://mandrivausers.org/index.php?s...wpa_supplicant

Hope this helps.

Cliff, thanks again for the reply. Those posts you mention turned out not to apply to my specific problem. But the good news is that I finally have it fixed. I am going to summarize what I have learned for anyone else who might stumble upon this thread in hopes it saves them the trouble I went through.

First, there are two broad ctagories of wifi problems: 1. your interface is not configured properly in linux, and 2. Your wpa_supplicant is not configured properly for a specific access point.

My case was the latter. This was clear by the fact that everything worked fine at home, but not at my University. In fact, the point was that everything worked fine with any AP that used WPA-PSK or "less". But most large organizations, like a University, are using something like WPA-TKIP (the difference between the two seems to be a major point of confusion in many posts on this subject).

Many linux distros do not currently provide a GUI which allows configuration of WPA-TKIP (though I am seeing much promise in this area in some beta distros and even the current Ubuntu) leaving one to figure out how to manually configure wpa_supplicant properly. This can be a daunting task for anyone not a wifi expert as there are many possible parameters to set and who knows what half of them mean? Furthermore, it is very unlikely based on my experience and others who have posted similar issues that you will get any useful advice from your organization's help desk.

So to cut to the chase, here is the configuration that I finally found that worked at my school. If you are having similar problems as I was, I hope this helps at least get you closer to the solution.

In the file /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf (at least that is where it is on Mandriva 2006) add this block to the end:

network={
ssid="Your school's SSID"
scan_ssid=1
key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
eap=PEAP
pairwise=CCMP TKIP
group=CCMP TKIP
identity="username"
password="password"
phase1="peaplabel=0"
phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
}

Good work, any chance your university will make the information available to other linux users, and post it on their web site?

Well, Cliff, I certainly hope so. I am going to write up a little tutorial for other students and see if I can get them to post it.