Wpa-supplicant and ipw3945

Question

Hello everyone.
I've always struggled with my network configuration. I got along some time to configure it every time I reboot my computer or I wanted to use another wireless network, as I don't often reboot and wireless configuration is mostly three painless bash lines for my purpose.
But now I want to automate this annoying process. I stumbled over the Autowifi wiki article which seems to meet my needs perfectly.
Though I thought I won't experience any problems as my network configuration is fairly easy, here they are.
By now I connect to a non-encrypted wireless network by dhcp. (WPA encryption disabled for testing purpose as I thought it may be an error source.)
I can connect to my wireless network with the following commands:
# iwconfig eth1 essid wlan@alex
# dhclient eth1
I've installed wpa_supplicant according to the wiki article.
My /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf looks like this:
update_config=0
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=users
eapol_Version=1
ap_scan=0
fast_reauth=1
network={
ssid="wlan@alex"
key_mgmt=NONE
As autowifi does not work I've tried to run wpa_supplicant manually.
I ran it with this command and the output looks fine:
# wpa_supplicant -i eth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -dd
Output: http://pastebin.archlinux.org/12946
My autowifi configuration is left to it's defaults as I think I don't have anything to change by now:
/etc/conf.d/autowifi
INTERFACE="eth1"
CONFIG="/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf"
/etc/autowifi/networks/default
NETWORK="dhcp"
As you've guessed from the title, my wlan adapter uses the ipw3945 drivers. I read that wpa_supplicant doesn't support this driver at all, does support it if I enable it in the compiling options or does support the driver by default. What of this is true?
Thanks for your reply.
And sorry if this thread has become too long. \:

Answer 1

I've never used autowifi, but I thought I'd chime in to say that the ipw3945 driver does work with wpa_supplicant, and even WPA-TKIP secured networks.  I have the 3945 chipset as well and I've used wpa_supplicant with wifi-radar to connect to my own home network.  Below is an example of my wpa_supplicant settings for a secured WPA-TKIP connection (WPA Personal with Passkey authentication):
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=0
ap_scan=1
fast_reauth=1
network={
    ssid="wireless-network-name"
    scan_ssid=1     # only needed if your access point uses a hidden ssid (mine does)
    key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
    proto=WPA
#    pairwise=TKIP    # wifi-radar seems to figure this out on its own, but you may need to uncomment them
#    group=TKIP    # wifi-radar seems to figure this out on its own, but you may need to uncomment them
    psk=f80c1487388b2a2150aa699ba1695024fb493d36e1c42f8327a78537a0728ade    # generated with the command below
To generate the preshared passkey, run:
$ wpa_passphrase your-network-ssid
Now enter the password at the prompt and press Enter
Copy/paste the generated code to your wpa_supplicant info
Last edited by thayer.w (2007-08-22 19:06:17)