Arch Linux

kma

Member

Registered: 2013-09-22

Posts: 1

SOOL with encrypted wifi ad-hoc network?

Hi,

I want to create an ad-hoc wireless encrypted link from my arch workstation to my macbook air (running Mac OS X 10.7.5).

I have an unencrypted link set up on my workstation, and it works flawless (although not tested for a longer period).  But naturally I want encryption, preferably WPA. And I guess WEP, broken as it is, is just slightly better than no encryption at all.

My workstation have two interfaces, eno1 is connected to Internet, and eth0 is the wireless (on the not so well supported Broadcom chip). Hardware and kernel modules as follow:

00:19.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82579V Gigabit Network Connection [8086:1503] (rev 04)
	Kernel modules: e1000e

03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43228 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:4359]
	Kernel modules: bcma, wl

I've followed the instructions on the arch wiki page ad-hoc networing.

To summarize:

1. No encrypting: Works flawless.

2. WPA encrypting: No luck: macbook sees open network, or WPA enterprise protected network.

3. WEP encrypting: No luck: macbook sees WPA enterprise protected network, or can not reach workstation.

A little further explanation of 1. and 2. If I configure WPA according to the wiki (no errors), my macbook still see an open network (that works). If I removed the -D flag to wpa_supplicant it sees a WPA enterprise protected network instead, and asks for username and password. It does not work since, of course, that's not what my workstation expect, and not what I asked for in the setup.

For point 2. I configured wpa_supplicant for WEP like so:

network={
   ssid="AD_HOC_TESTING_SSID"
   mode=1
   frequency=2412
   key_mgmt=NONE
   wep_key0=01234567890123456789012345
   wep_tx_keyidx=0
}

No luck. My macbook still see a WPA enterprise protected network. I then tried the other way around, I created the network on the mac. When I connect from my workstation my mac receives IP, gateway and DNS settings as it should, and claim to be connected. But I can not reach the workstation (nor anything else) with a simple ping.

I'm pretty confident all other network settings are correct, as everything works on the open unencrypted connection.

Any ideas what I can try next?

My wireless device does only support managed and ibss mode, or I would try to set it up as an AP.