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||||<style="background-color: #E0E0FF;">The wpasupplicant_0.5.3 package drops support for madwifi-old drivers. Please upgrade to madwifi-ng. See below for details ||||
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'''MadWifi users beware!''' ==== MadWifi users beware! ====
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'''Upgrading wpasupplicant from a package version <0.4.8-1 will break your setup!''' ==== Upgrading wpasupplicant from a package version <0.4.8-1 will break your setup! ====
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This will ''definitely'' happen unless This will happen unless

WPA support in Debian

This package gives an overview of the status on wpa support in Debian. The [http://packages.debian.org/wpasupplicant wpasupplicant] package is [http://packages.qa.debian.org maintained] by the following people:

  • ?KyleMcMartin

  • ?KelModderman

  • ?ReinhardTartler

You can join development discussions in our [http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/pkg-wpa-devel mailing list] on [http://alioth.debian.org/projects/pkg-wpa/ alioth], where we discuss [http://bugs.debian.org/src:wpasupplicant bugs] and future developemnts.

The wpasupplicant_0.5.3 package drops support for madwifi-old drivers. Please upgrade to madwifi-ng. See below for details

What is WPA

Wi-Fi Protected Access, a wireless encryption standard and alternative to "Wired Equivalent Privacy" (WEP) is well described by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Protected_Access wikipedia]. In order to secure your wireless network you need a WPA enabled access point, and a supplicant, like wpasupplicant installed on your computer.

wpasupplicant in Debian 3.1 (sarge)

In sarge, the wpasupplicant package was configured as system service. This means that you have to edit wpasupplicant parameters like the interface to be managed the ["WPA/DriverBackend"] to /etc/default/wpasupplicant, and provide a suitable /etc/wpasupplicant.conf yourself.

Debian sarge includes [http://packages.debian.org/stable/source/wpasupplicant wpasupplicant 0.3.8]. This branch is currently still supported by upstream, but the recommended branch is the 0.4.x one. You can get an updated package from http://backports.org. Please note that the package from backports.org is based on the 'etch' package, so please read the notes below.

wpasupplicant in Debian testing/unstable (Codename "etch")

In etch, the system service /etc/init.d/wpasupplicant was dropped. The debian package provides integration to /etc/network/interfaces just like the [http://packages.debian.org/wireless-tools wireless-tools package]. This means the wpasupplicant package does no longer provide a system service wpasupplicant itself!

For information how to configure wpasupplicant please refer to [http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-wpa/trunk/wpasupplicant/debian/README.modes?op=file&rev=0&sc=0 README.modes] (from svn.debian.org), which gives examples for /etc/network/interfaces files.

Upgrade Issues

MadWifi users beware!

The 0.5.X wpasupplicant packages support only the so called "madwifi-ng" version of madwifi. Currently that module is only available in the experimental branch, however, it will soon enter debian unstable. Please watch /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/NEWS.Debian.gz for information on how to enable support for madwifi-old.

Please also visit the debian pages on the [http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/Distro/Debian madwifi.org] wiki for information on where to obtain madwifi drivers and support for its use on Debian. The people to consult are [http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/Distro/Debian#Contact mentioned here].

Upgrading wpasupplicant from a package version <0.4.8-1 will break your setup!

This will happen unless

  1. you are not using the init script and
  2. you are not using /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.

To restore the old behavior you can either install the init script yourself (Read the [http://svn.debian.org/wsvn/pkg-wpa/trunk/wpasupplicant/debian/NEWS?op=file&rev=0&sc=0 instructions] for this), or use a package which uses wpasupplicant to provide such a system service (note, that such a package doesn't seem to exist at the moment).

Why

We want to improve WPA secured networking and location roaming support in debian. The system service makes it hard to integrate support for packages like [http://packages.debian.org/src:network-manager NetworkManager], which start instances of wpasupplicant themselves. We no longer bother with the system service approach in the basic package itself, but delegate this task to more specialised packages. Therefore the wpasupplicant package provides only basic integration for easy (read: non roaming) cases.

Moreover this approach makes it easier to support more than one interface: Just configure them in /etc/network/interfaces.

But I do want to use the roaming feature of wpasupplicant!

wpasupplicant can be used as a roaming daemon. You have 2 options to exploit this possibility:

Use it as system service and make ifplugd to "activate the interface"

[http://packages.debian.org/src:ifplugd ifplugd] has support for wireless networking: Whenever an association to an AP is detected the network will be configured using ifupdown. This approach assumes that wpasupplicant runs as system service and ifupdown can safely activate a network alias. For detecting the 'correct' alias you can use the [http://packages.debian.org/src:guessnet guessnet] package.

Action Scripts

wpa_supplicant can call 'hooks' (["WPA/ActionScripts"]) when it enters or leaves a location. This is the ideal place to configure the interface e.g. with the [http://packages.debian.org/src:whereami whereami] package. Just configure whereami and call it with whereami --hint $IFACE from the action script.