wpa_supplicant questions

[Eduardo Morras]

On Sun, 24 Aug 2014 14:59:44 -0700
David Benfell <benfell at parts-unknown.org> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> With my notebook system, I wander various places and have to alter the
> wpa supplicant configuration for some of these places. (Fortunately,
> this proved easier than I expected and the initial installation
> provided example entries that, gee, I know work.)
> 
> I then need to restart the network, sometimes overriding an
> association wpa_supplicant may already have made. 
> 
> 'service netif restart' seems inadequate and I have been having to
> reboot--an elaborate process because the notebook is UEFI and won't
> boot legacy-style off the hard disk.
> 
> What is the correct incantation to do this?

As root shell:

#wpa_cli

help       /* Shows a list of commands a few description  */

list       /* List the networks defined in /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf */

select n   /* selects the network number n from upper list */

You can add new to wpa_supplicant.conf or use wpa_cli commands for it.

> Also, how does one escape an apostrophe in an SSID, as in "Nature's
> Express" (the SSID at a vegan restaurant in North Berkeley), in the
> wpa supplicant configuration?

Don't know, it should work because your wpa_supplicant.conf entry should look similar this one:

network={
    ssid="Nature's Express"
    scan_ssid=1
    key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
    psk="secretpassword"
}

where ssid is quoted with "", if don't work, you can try a double ' or \'.

> Finally, does 'ifconfig scan' output indicate signal strength? At a
> conference I attended yesterday, they had several similarly named
> access points to choose from (the ability to use a wildcard would have
> been helpful as they all take the same password), but I did not know
> which I should choose. As you can imagine, this compounded the above
> difficulties--I wound up abandoning my attempt to use my FreeBSD
> notebook in this situation.

Don't know, it's the first time I use ifconfig wlan0 scan. It shows the column S:N and looks like a Signal to Noise. Signal, the close to 0, the better. Noise, the close to -100 the better.
SSID/MESH ID    BSSID              CHAN RATE   S:N     INT CAPS
AP1             00:1a:5b:be         11   54M -91:-96  100 EP  
AP2             72:c0:3b:ec          3   54M -94:-96  100 EP   HTCAP WPA WME WPS
AP3             bc:14:13:88          4   54M -92:-96  100 EP   HTCAP WPA RSN WME
AP4             00:26:db:d8          9   54M -93:-96  100 EP   HTCAP WPA RSN WME

I use wpa_cli for this too:

#wpa_cli

scan
OK
scan_results
bssid / frequency / signal level / flags / ssid
9c:6d:eb:e6       2472    -88     [WPA-PSK-TKIP+CCMP][WPA2-PSK-TKIP+CCMP][ESS]    AP19
bc:01:00:e8       2462    -90     [WPA-PSK-TKIP+CCMP][WPA2-PSK-TKIP+CCMP][ESS]    AP31
f8:85:de:96       2412    -91     [WPA-PSK-TKIP+CCMP][ESS]        AP13

HTH

> Thanks!
> -- 
> David Benfell <benfell at parts-unknown.org>

---   ---
Eduardo Morras <emorrasg at yahoo.es>