It's so easy once you know how. I did some web surfing yesterday on my netbook at the Toronto Public Library (North York Centre). The main problem turned out to be that I had to drop my firewall for a few seconds during authentication, then I could bring it back up. There is an initial redirect to a EULA webpage of sorts, in the 10.x.x.x range, which I have blocked.
Anyhow, for the benefit of anyone else trying to do the same, here is my successful setup. I have an ath5k-driven Wifi chip, and ath5k is built as a module. It is *NOT* loaded at bootup. wpa_supplicant is the client software I use (command-line only). /etc/conf.d/net =============== config_eth0="192.168.123.249 broadcast 192.168.123.255 netmask 255.255.255.248 mtu 1452" routes_eth0=( "default via 192.168.123.254 metric 2" "192.168.123.248/29 via 192.168.123.254 metric 0" ) modules=( "wpa_supplicant" ) config_wlan0=( "null" ) wpa_supplicant_wlan0="-Dwext" wpa_timeout_wlan0=15 I do *NOT* have /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf This causes wpa_supplicant to *NOT* load. This is deliberate. /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.open is the file name I use for open access points... /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.open ============================= ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant # Connect to an open AP network={ ssid="Toronto Public Library" key_mgmt=NONE priority=9 } network={ key_mgmt=NONE priority=-9 } And finally, a script ~/bin/wi_open that ties it all together. Remember to put appropriate lines in /etc/sudoers ~/bin/wi_open ============= #!/bin/bash sudo /sbin/modprobe ath5k sudo /etc/init.d/net.wlan0 restart sudo /sbin/ifconfig wlan0 up sudo /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 essid any channel auto sudo /usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -B -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.open sudo /sbin/dhcpcd wlan0 If you have a different chip, you'll need a different module. Having gotten that to work, my next adventure will be getting the netbook to work with a wireless router in WPA mode. -- Walter Dnes <waltd...@waltdnes.org>