ifconfig for WLAN using WEP

[Paul Schmehl]

--On Monday, December 20, 2004 02:14:20 AM -0600 Scott Bennett 
<bennett at cs.niu.edu> wrote:

>      I've been asked in freebsd-newbies to move this to freebsd-questions,
> so I'll start with my original message content after this line.
>      I'm trying to get my FreeBSD 5.2.1 system to connect to our household
> wireless net.  The router and the only other computer in the household are
> using WEP, so my FreeBSD machine needs to do so as well.  Unfortunately,
> whenever I add a WEP-related argument (e.g., wep, wepkey, wepmode) to the
> ifconfig command, as in
>
> 	ifconfig fwe0 wep
>
> I get
>
> 	ifconfig: SIOCS80211: Invalid argument
>
This was posted recently here by Daan Vreeken.

You can't combine "use DHCP" and "use this SSID" in /etc/rc.conf .
To do both, you need to create a startup script that sets the interface
options (ssid / wep key / etc) and then just set /etc/rc.conf to use DHCP.

In /etc/rc.conf put this :
ifconfig_ath0="DHCP"

Then place this in a file called /etc/start_if.ath0  :

ifconfig ath0 ssid "some network" wepmode on wepkey 0x1234567890123

--- end of /etc/start_if.ath0 ---


The RC scripts will now first execute /etc/start_if.ath0 on boot, and then 
try
to get an ip address on the interface with dhclient.

Obviously, your file would be /etc/start_if.fwe0.

Paul Schmehl (pauls at utdallas.edu)
Adjunct Information Security Officer
The University of Texas at Dallas
AVIEN Founding Member
http://www.utdallas.edu