Easy Peasy - Day 1

After installing Easy Peasy on my EeePC 701, my first obstacle was that I couldn't connect to my work network which uses PEAP-TKIP. The problem that I was up against was that Ubuntu 8.10 (which EP is based on) doesn't include support for PEAP-TKIP. Thankfully, Wicd (an alternative to NetworkManager) does!

Further complicating the matter was that no certificate file was being used so after installing Wicd and trying to configure my network settings I kept getting smacked with the "Missing encryption settings!" dialog because I was leaving the certificate field blank.

After a bit of digging, I found that there is a file that Wicd uses as a template for connections and I could modify that to suit my needs. The location of that file is:

/etc/wicd/encryption/templates/peap-tkip

Here's what it looks like before:

name = PEAP with TKIP
author = Fralaltro
version = 1
require identity *Identity password *Password ca_cert *Path_to_CA_Cert
-----
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
netowkr={
  ssid="$_ESSID"
  scan_ssid=$_SCAN
  proto=WPA
  key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
  pairwise=TKIP
  group=TKIP
  eap=PEAP
  identity="$_IDENTITY"
  password="$_PASSWORD"
  ca_cert="$_CA_CERT"
  phase1="peaplabel=0"
  phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
}

... and here's what it looks like after:

name = PEAP with TKIP
author = Fralaltro
version = 1
require identity *Identity password *Password
-----
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
netowkr={
  ssid="$_ESSID"
  scan_ssid=$_SCAN
  proto=WPA
  key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
  pairwise=TKIP
  group=TKIP
  eap=PEAP
  identity="$_IDENTITY"
  password="$_PASSWORD"
  ca_cert="$_CA_CERT"
  phase1="peaplabel=0"
  phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
}

After saving this and executing a

sudo /etc/init.d/wicd restart

I found that I could connect to my network without supplying a certificate!

***UPDATE***
Unfortunately the fix didn't last past the first upgrade. After tossing my ethernet cable aside, I did a system upgrade and promptly lost my WiFi connection =( I'm trying to fix this by switching to the MadWiFi drivers.

We'll see...