README-wireless.txt suggestion

[PDP-8]

I've been going through your very nice README docs and have a small suggestion for the README-wireless.txt .  Please feel free to edit for brevity!!

In the section that starts out saying

Code: [Select]

Then create a file /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf to contain:
I would modify this for newcomers to read:

.....Then use the wpa_passphrase utility to automatically generate the very long psk key, and also generate the text formatting needed for /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file.  The results will be sent to standard output....

Example: You bring home a wireless router and decide to program your ESSID, the name that you and your neighbors can see over the air, "mylab1" inside the router.  You also program into the router the password that you need to connect.  You choose a very weak obvious password like "123password".  Don't worry about quotation marks at this point.

Run wpa_passphrase [essid] [password]

and your automatically generated text will be sent to standard output.

Because the psk key in the text is so long, most users just do a copy & paste, or redirection to get this text into the /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file.  Manual transcription into a new /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file is very prone to errors.

Using the values in the shiny new router example above:

Code: [Select]

wpa_passphrase mylab1 123password

network={
   ssid="mylab1"
   #psk="123password"
psk=D1149D3E8ECD26F3F1B200  ....... (and on and on!)
}
Note: even if you DID try and do this manually without errors, notice that the uncommented psk line has no quotation marks.

Also, my /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file is owned by root in the root group.

Kind of related but off topic - use a MODERN router, with WPA2, and possibly try the TKIP or CCMP encryption (ccmp based on aes256).

Anyway, thought this might be of some help to newcomers.

[Jason W]

Hi PDP-8.

If you or anyone else would like to update any of the REAME files please do so and you can attach them to your post here in the forum and I will upload them to the README area. 

Thanks

[PDP-8]

Ok, attached is my addition to README-wireless.txt

Tried to make the additions as short and simple as I could.

[PDP-8]

This addition to README-wireless.txt also includes a mention of wifi.sh

I thought just in case somebody plowed through the readme's first, did an install, and didn't realize that the automated wifi.sh script exists, and might be preferable to all the manual editing.

[Jason W]

Uploaded, thanks.