Quick Howto: WPA on Mepis 3.3.1

Heres how i got WPA working on mepis 3.3.1

My network card is a Linksys WUSB54G, so i had to use ndiswrapper to get it working. The configuration files below are based on my card, so you may have to adapt them slightly.

1. Get your card recognised in mepis, a how to for this might be good.

2. Your wireless device should be assigned the interface name wlan0, in mepis control centre, configure your IP address settings for the device.

3. if you don't have intrnet access from mepis, download and install the testing version of wpa_supplicant from packages.debian.org. If you do, use kpackage. You will need to select the debian repositories in synaptic for 3.3.1 to see the debian repositories. 3.3 doesn't require this.

4. create a file called wpa_supplicant.conf in /etc/ use the below config.

# for wpa_cli support
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant

#WPA Settings
network={
ssid="yourssidhere"
psk="yourwpakeyhere"
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
proto=WPA
}

5. goto /etc/default and edit wpasupplicant with the following changes below.

change ENABLED=0 to ENABLED=1

Change OPTIONS="-w" to
OPTIONS="-w -Dndiswrapper -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf"

the above options setting needs to be on one line.

if you not using ndiswrapper for your wireless device, change -Dndiswrapper. if you type wpa_supplicant in a terminal, you should see the list of driver names wpa supports.

if your wireless device isn't shown as wlan0 in iwconfig, change -iwlan0 to what your wireless device is called: eg. -iath0

6. Reboot the pc and hopefully WPA should be working from startup.