Arch Linux

joel.obrecht

Member

Registered: 2010-02-18

Posts: 13

Manual connection to FreeWifi (ifconfig iwconfig dhcpcd) [solved]

Hi all,
I would like to share my attemps (mostly sucessful now) to connect to FreeWifi, a huge wifi hotspots network in France. I'm not using wicd (not useful at all I think), neither network-manager. I assume your network card is configured and works, mine is wlan0, yours may be different. I'm currently working on an Asus 1005ha.

First you need a useful scan of the networks, so perform :
# iwlist scan wlan0 | grep -e Address -e Quality | less
I do not use ESSID, because they are very often more than one network named "FreeWifi", so... Let's use ap (access points mac adresses).

When you found the MAC Address xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx of the access point you prefer, type "q" to quit the less command. Your data keeps printed on the screen, that's useful for next steps.

Then take your network card down
# ifconfig wlan0 down

And stop or quit dhcpcd if you need
# dhcpcd wlan0 -x
and, if it does not quit :
# killall dhcpcd

Then, point your wifi card on the access point you chose :
# iwconfig wlan0 mode managed ap xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx key open

Take your network card up in the kernel :
# ifconfig wlan0 up

If it doesn't get up (SIOCSIFFLAGS or whatever), turn on physically your wifi card, check connections, try loading default BIOS configuration... It should work

Ask the wifi hotspot for an IP address :
# dhcpcd wlan0

It should work. Next step is to enter your access code in a browser :
# su yourusername
$ elinks www.free.fr

And you're connected.