Connecting To Eduroam On Linux, *BSD and Solaris

The Problem

I needed to connect to my college's Eduroam WIFI network, but doing this on *BSD boxes from the command line proved to be quite the task.

What You Will Need

I am sure there will be other solutions to this problem which require different tools, but the tools I used are as follows:

wpa_supplicant

I would suggest if you're not bothered by using GUI tools, to find a graphical WIFI manager to connect to Eduroam networks, since this will prove to be a million times easier than my command line method.

The Solution

Linux, FreeBSD, NetBSD and Solaris

First we must create a file in /etc called /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.

NOTE: this file might already exist so be careful with it.In this file we must define the Eduroam network with some special parameters:


				network={
				

        ssid="eduroam"
				

        identity="my_username@my_domain.com"
				

        anonymous_identity="anonymous@my_domain.com"
				

        password="myStrongPassword123"
				

        scan_ssid=0
				

        disabled=0
				

        auth_alg=OPEN
				

        key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
				

        proto=WPA RSN
				

        pairwise=CCMP TKIP
				

        eap=TTLS
				

        phase1="peaplabel=0"
				

        phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
				

			}

Since Eduroam networks are not like your typical home network, all of these parameters are required in order for it to work. Now make sure that wpa_supplicant is started in the background at boot time by using your operating systems init system, and you should be good to go connecting to Eduroam.

NOTE: incase you did not see, change my_username and my_domain.com to your username and your institutions domain.

OpenBSD

OpenBSD handles wireless networks a little differently than other operating systems like Linux or FreeBSD, it uses ifconfig to connect, ifconfig works differently on OpenBSD than it does on other operating systems.

The first step is to find your wireless interface by using the ifconfig command, ifconfig will spit out a bunch of seemingly random information, but you want to look for something like "wlan0" or "iwn0", it's more than likely you will not have more than one wireless card in your computer so it shouldn't be too tricky figuring out which one is which, for all of my examples I am going to refer to my wireless interface as iwn0. If in doubt, trial and error.

After identifying your network interface, we need to create a file in /etc called /etc/hostname.iwn0 of course change the iwn0 at the end of the file name to your specific wireless interface. In this file we want to add these lines

join somenetwork wpakey PASSWORD join eduroam wpa wpaakms 802.1x inet autoconf

"somenetwork" in this file is the networks that you want to connect to normally, like your home network, we do not need to go through another tool like wpa_supplicant for simple networks on OpenBSD.

Now we must create a file in /etc called /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.

NOTE: this file might already exist so be careful with it.In this file we must define the Eduroam network with some special parameters:

network={ ssid="eduroam" identity="my_username@my_domain.com" anonymous_identity="anonymous@my_domain.com" password="myStrongPassword123" scan_ssid=0 disabled=0 auth_alg=OPEN key_mgmt=WPA-EAP proto=WPA RSN pairwise=CCMP TKIP eap=TTLS phase1="peaplabel=0" phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2" }

Since Eduroam networks are not like your typical home network, Now we must start wpa_supplicant at boot time with some specific flags. wpa_supplicant -i iwn0 -D openbsd -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -B