WIRELESS(8)

NAME
wireless - scan for and configure wireless networks

SYNOPSIS
wireless [file]

DESCRIPTION
wireless scans for and configures wireless networks on OpenBSD. It uses ifconfig(8) to do most of the heavy lifting and basically just interprets and applies scan results.

USAGE
Just run wireless once to scan for known wireless LANs and configure the earliest network in the configuration file, for example:

    $ wireless
    ... wait a bit for scanning and configuration ...
    $ dhclient iwn0

The result of the scan can also be written to a file. The format of the file is described in CONFIGURATION STATEMENTS below.

If necessary (see the CONFIGURATION OVERVIEW section below), wireless will notify wpa_supplicant(8) of the newly established connection by calling

    wpa_cli reassoc

CONFIGURATION OVERVIEW
This is an example configuration file:

    device iwn0
    dump /var/db/wireless/aps
    verbose
    open   freifunk.paderborn.net
    802.1x eduroam
    wpa    "home network" thisismypassword

There are three kinds of networks, open, wpa and 802.1x. All of these get an SSID as their first parameter. wpa gets the password or hex key as the second parameter. SSIDs and passwords which contain spaces can be enclosed in single or double quotes. Regular string quoting rules apply:

    wpa "Hello\"foo" 'I\'m a password!'

You can include files with the include statement:

    include /home/user/.wireless.conf

Macros can be set and used like this:

    mypw = "foobar! 1234#$"
    hexkey = 0x092876e79594ae7beda40dd150d17fa215e51f22cb990f9ec640a267c96fbedf
    wpa nw1 $mypw
    wpa nw2 $hexkey

The priority of a network depends on the order of networks in the configuration file. The earlier a network appears, the higher is its priority. If an SSID is visible multiple times (such as in campus networks), the access point with the strongest RSSI is chosen.

CONFIGURATION STATEMENTS
This section outlines the available configuration statements.

debug | verbose
    Enables debugging or verbose mode. See DIAGNOSTICS below for details.

    Both debug and verbose can be specified at the same time.

device name
    Use name as the device to configure.

dump path
    Dump a list of configured networks to path. It contains one line for each access point with the following information:

        BSSID RSSI encrypted? known? SSID..

    There is no default path, which means that if no dump statement is given, the list of networks is not written out.

include path
    Includes the file path at the point where the include statement appears in the file.

open nwid
    Defines an unencrypted network.

wpa nwid password|hexkey
    Defines a WPA2 network.

802.1x nwid
    Defines a WPA2 network that uses IEEE 802.1x as the key management scheme. This requires using wpa_supplicant(8) to handle the actual key management.

FILES
/etc/wireless.conf
    configuration file

DIAGNOSTICS
If the keyword verbose is given in the configuration file, the name of the network that is being configured will be printed to the standard error stream.

The keyword debug enables behaviour that helps debugging. Its meaning will change without prior notice, so it should not be used outside of development.

SEE ALSO
ifconfig(8), wpa_passphrase(8), wpa_supplicant(8)

AUTHORS

•   Gregor Best <gbe@unobtanium.de>

•   jggimi (pledging)

•   spedru (improvements to the wpa_supplicant(8) interface)

•   -nosplit Klemens Nanni <kn@openbsd.org> (improvements to the manpage)