Using i4965AGN (iwlwifi + not ndiswrapper) and wpa_supplicant

For some reason I've always had a mental block about wpa_supplicant. I thought it was hard to setup.Well for WPA Personal it is not.

So after getting discouraged about not seeing anyone getting wpa_supplicant working with the iwlifi/mac80211 drivers, I was suprised to actually get WPA working with my Linksys AP (one of the crappy new VXWorks based ones I think). See my previous blog for the list of components necessary.

Using a simple config file (/etc/wpasupplicant.conf)

network={
ssid="kartoffel"
psk="m00nfac3"
}

The stock Debian 4.0 network-manager packages and wpasupplicant 5.5 ( which is a dependency of network-manager) were required. So starting from scratch:

franz-t61:~/iwlwifi# ./unload
Unloaded: iwl4965 iwl3945 mac80211 cfg80211
franz-t61:~/iwlwifi# ./load
No modules unloaded.
Loaded: iwl3945 iwl4965
franz-t61:~/iwlwifi# startwpa
ioctl[SIOCSIWAUTH]: Operation not supported
WEXT auth param 4 value 0x0 - ioctl[SIOCSIWAUTH]: Operation not supported
WEXT auth param 5 value 0x1 - franz-t61:~/iwlwifi# cat /usr/local/bin/startwpa
wpa_supplicant -B -c /etc/wpasupplicant.conf -i wlan0 -D wext
franz-t61:~/iwlwifi# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"kartoffel"  Nickname:""
         Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.457 GHz  Access Point: 00:18:F8:52:B5:E1
         Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power=27 dBm
         Retry min limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr=2346 B
         Encryption key: wo-ul-dn-ty-li-ke-to-kn-ow
         Power Management:off
         Link Quality=65/100  Signal level=-68 dBm  Noise level=-127 dBm
         Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
         Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

franz-t61:~/iwlwifi# dhclient wlan0
There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.pid with pid 5114
killed old client process, removed PID file
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.4
Copyright 2004-2006 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801
Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:13:e8:08:8d:f5
Sending on   LPF/wlan0/00:13:e8:08:8d:f5
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK from 192.168.170.1
bound to 192.168.170.100 -- renewal in 35748 seconds.

And of course there are NetworkManager and wpa_supplicant daemons. I think I've actually got 5-6 wpa_supplicants running, hehe.