Wifi, network settings

[PapaParrot]

I am confused, and even after reading the stickied topic :http://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=6245 , also 'man ifconfig', and more, still confused.

If I have the modem set to "security mode = none", then I have no problem connecting to the wifi, but as soon as I set the modem to "WPA2-PSK" , and set the "shared key= thispasswd "
(thispasswd) being the password, well then I can not connect, obviously sincee I need to use the password I set,..
This is my ifconfig , with out using any password :

athn0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
	lladdr 0c:60:76:00:05:9f
	index 1 priority 4 llprio 3
	groups: wlan egress
	media: IEEE802.11 autoselect (HT-MCS7 mode 11n)
	status: active
	ieee80211: nwid Telcel-A757 chan 5 bssid 3c:cd:5d:2b:a7:57

In /etc/hosnames.athn0 it only says:

dhcp

My attempts at adding the password, and/or nwid, as mentioned in the above thread I link
to

If you need to clear a prior WEP key or WPA passphrase, add the -nwkey or -wpakey operands to your ifconfig command.

I also tried editing "hostnames.athn0", but no luck,... I did have this working before, a long time ago, but last night I installed the newest openbsd , to the laptop, and can not remember how I had set it up before, and like a dummy, I did not make a copy of my old settings, it seems like when I did it before it was easy, maybe I am getting "senile" but can not seem to figure it out this time.
Thanks

[shep]

wpaciphers cipher,cipher,...
Set the comma-separated list of allowed pairwise ciphers.

The supported values are “tkip”, “ccmp”, and “usegroup”.
usegroup specifies that no pairwise ciphers are supported and
that only group keys should be used. The default value is
“ccmp”. If multiple pairwise ciphers are specified, the pairwise
cipher will be negotiated between the station and the access
point at association time. A station will always try to use ccmp
over tkip if both ciphers are allowed and supported by the access
point. If the selected cipher is not supported by the hardware,
software encryption will be used. Check the driver's manual page
to know which ciphers are supported in hardware.

wpagroupcipher cipher
Set the group cipher used to encrypt broadcast and multicast
traffic.

The supported values are “wep40”, “wep104”, “tkip”, and “ccmp”.
The default value is “ccmp”. The use of tkip or wep40 or wep104
as the group cipher is discouraged due to weaknesses in TKIP and
WEP. The wpagroupcipher option is available in Host AP mode
only. A station will always use the group cipher of the BSS.

I had a similar problem when CCMP was made the default cipher. My wireless access point was using TKIP, and like you, I could not connect. Setting the router cipher to CCMP solved my problem.

[jggimi]

Garry, for clarity, let's consider your wireless NIC during boot, after the kernel has finished its booting scan but before your hostname.athn0 file has been read by netstart(8), which gets called by rc(8). This is the same state if there is no hostname.athn0 file:

• There is no network SSID assigned. (That's the "nwid" in OpenBSD-speak.)
• There is no WEP key assigned. (That's the "nwkey" in OpenBSD-speak.) This is an older, insecure encryption mechanism, still supported for older Wifi access points that are too old to support WPA or WPA2.
• There is no WPA/WPA2 pre-shared key assigned. (That's the "wpakey" in OpenBSD-speak.)

If you want to use a WPA2 pre-shared key of "thispasswd" with an SSID of Telcel-A757, on the OpenBSD side, one possible ifconfig(8) command to set these would be:

# ifconfig athn0 nwid "Telcel-A757" wpakey "thisspasswd"

Then, to start the DHCP client, one could issue the command:

# dhclient athn0

These two manual commands may start WiFi network communication, using WPA2 encryption.

These same commands will be executed by netstart(8) if they are provisioned in hostname.athn0, such as:

nwid "Telcel-A757" wpakey "thispasswd"
dhcp

There are many possible reasons for failure. As shep has noted, authentication protocols, key management protocols, and the various permitted ciphers need to be in alignment. But let's make sure you are configuring the OpenBSD NIC properly before investigating those.

[PapaParrot]

Thanks, both, what you show jggimi, worked perfectly,...I knew it was pretty simple,..but just could not remember, any way, great now we have a good working example here, and I am going to save the instruction to a file as well,.. thanks
P.S. also edited the hostname.athn0 files with the changes, so it should work when Iboot again.

[ibara]

If you're using hostname.<if> you should use the new syntax:

join my-router wpakey my-password
dhcp

[PapaParrot]

Thanks, I was looking into that, one thing that has me confused, do I need to make a file named :
hostname.if ? At this time I have no file named "hostname.if" or is the "if",just meaning the interface, IE:
mine : athn0

[jggimi]

The hostname.if(5) man page describes these files. The file names we use are "hostname.<NIC driver and number, as shown in ifconfig(8) or dmesg(8) output>"

[PapaParrot]

Ok, thanks, I looked at it,(The hostname.if(5) man page) actually had before,

Each line is processed separately and in order. For example:

[code] nwid mynwid wpakey mywpakey
inet6 autoconf
dhcp [/qode]

And I think, part of where I was confused, or going wrong is in the example they show, they do not use " " like you did in your example:

nwid "Telcel-A757" wpakey "thispasswd"
dhcp

Before I was saying it like this:

nwid mynwid wpakey thispasswd

So I had 2 things wrong, I needed the Telcel-A757, instead of mynwid, and also apparently needed the quotation marks " , any way, it works now, like you showed. Thanks again,

[jggimi]

The quotation marks can be helpful if you have any special characters in strings, and your SSID ("nwid" in OpenBSD) has a hyphen in it.