Arch Linux

num18

Member

Registered: 2019-02-05

Posts: 13

Installing Arch in web wifi environment

Dear all,

I would like to install Arch (via a live usb) to a computer at my university whose only internet access is wifi through a web portal; i.e. one of those situations where you connect to wifi and then need to launch a browser to get a web interface to give a username and password to access the internet. 

In other words, is there a way to activate the wifi controller, connect to a network and send it web credentials from the barebones arch system right after installation?

For complicated reasons, it is not possible to move that computer to another place with an ethernet connection.

progandy

Member

Registered: 2012-05-17

Posts: 5,280

Re: Installing Arch in web wifi environment

The archiso includes elinks, you can use that as long as a text-only browser is enough to log in.

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| alias CUTF='LANG=en_XX.UTF-8@POSIX ' |

Trilby

Inspector Parrot

Registered: 2011-11-29

Posts: 30,333

Website

Re: Installing Arch in web wifi environment

Elinks should indeed be plenty.  It runs javascript just fine which is what most of these systems are based on.

Worst case scenario, with a bit of patience, you can log in through those systems even just with (several invocations of) curl.

But note that you will not have to just do this right after installation - you'll have to do it *before* you can install anything.  You need a network connection to install arch (following the normal installation procedure).

Last edited by Trilby (2019-02-25 15:36:24)

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"UNIX is simple and coherent" - Dennis Ritchie; "GNU's Not Unix" - Richard Stallman

nixawk

Member

Registered: 2015-01-23

Posts: 7

Re: Installing Arch in web wifi environment

Please try to use WAP-EAP authentication  (or another authentication method). Create file /etc/wpa_supplicant/example.conf, and save the contents.

network={
        ssid="<network>"
        key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
        identity="<username>"
        password="<password>"
}

$ sudo wpa_supplicant -B -i interface -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/example.conf

- https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/WPA_supplicant
- https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=88366

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Thanks for sharing.