WPA in Debian and Poky

2007-04-25T11:25:00+02:00

During last week I switched my home WiFi from insecure WEP to WPA2.

Why not used WPA before? My x86 test machine was ProGear which use Orinoco PCMCIA card (no WPA support) and I also used Tosa with that crap called wlan-ng (also no WPA support). Now I have USB Ethernet card and PCMCIA->CF adapter so both can be connected via wire or with CF WiFi card (Prism2 with 1.8.4 firmware so WPA out-of-box).

But since I use Dell D400 as x86 test machine ProGear is not powered — I will probably put it on shelf to get some desk space free (there is no such thing as big enough desk — just ones that are not cluttered yet).

But how to get WPA working in Debian, Poky, Ångström, OpenZaurus or other distros? You basically need few things:

WPA-Supplicant
card with good driver (so no Orinoco or wlan-ng crap)
proper configuration
network with WPA

First I configured “maluch” (D400). Installed wpasupplicant package and discovered that it is not supported out-of-box. README propose two methods:

Use only one network and configure network in /etc/network/interfaces
Roaming networks with extra scripts

I decided to follow 3rd way where you need to edit /etc/network/interfaces just to tell wpa-supplicant which config it has to use and which driver:

iface eth1 inet dhcp
        wpa-driver wext
        wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/config

This way wpa-supplicant is started automatically with /etc/wpa_supplicant/config file as configuration. This file also contain all networks which you want to connect. It can be edited by hand or using external tools — wpa_cli or wpa_gui (QT3/QT4). Have to check does it works ok with other networks then my home one but it should work.

Then same configuration on Zaurus C760 running Poky — Prism2 card in CompactFlash slot. Connecting to network works out-of-box now. On Nokia 770 all I need to to was entering WPA-PSK key.

The worst part was MS Windows laptop — I had to remove all networks from list of preferred ones, reboot and then enter WPA-PSK key to get it working.

Now it should be harder to connect to my network ;)

Instant messaging^W^WGaduGadu crap

2006-07-11T11:15:00+02:00

Many people use IM (Instant Messaging) each day. There are many protocols available: AIM, GaduGadu, GroupWise, ICQ, IRC, Jabber, Meanwhile, MSN, WinPopup, Yahoo and probably some other…

I use IRC since my usage of Internet began, then ICQ started to be popular (and my Amiga was connected to academic network via Ethernet), about year later people started switching to GaduGadu and some time later I started using Jabber. Today I use IRC each day (you can catch me on freenode and IRCnet), two Jabber accounts, one ICQ and two GaduGadu (one for private contacts, one for coworkers). My favorite method of IM contact is Jabber, then ICQ (I do not count IRC here as it is not so one-to-one chat). I dislike GaduGadu for its lack of normal features, ignoring privacy and such stuff.

For example — today I added contact of coworker to be able to send some infos to her instead of writing it in email or on sheet of paper. As usual she had to ask someone which number she has (GG use numbers like ICQ does — not names like Jabber or IRC). So I added her just to notice that she has a status ‘not available’. In this shit called GG it does not have to mean that you are not available — it can be that user defined status as ‘hidden’. In ICQ or Jabber this stuff is handled by authorization — if I want someone to be able to see my status I can authorize contact. When I told her that I do not IM with ‘not available’ people she replied ‘Why? I prefer this way and will not change it — you can send me emails.’

Other GaguGagu crap is called ‘conferencies’ which are just few people chat not chatroom/channels. Anyone can start conference with other people — but all people got request ‘do you want to enter conference with NUM1, NUM2, NUM3, NUM4. NUM5’ — lack of any method to block of showing own number to people which I would like to avoid (if NUM3 does not want NUM5 knowing his number he cannot hide after such conference request).

Marcin Juszkiewicz - authorization

WPA in Debian and Poky

Instant messaging^W^WGaduGadu crap