[driverloader] DriverLoader, WEP and Apple Airport Extreme Base stations from SuSE

[Sebastien Stormacq]

Hello,

Should you ever try to connect to an Apple Airport extreme base station
:

Problem #1 : passphrase versus encryption key

The Airport Extreme Admin utility prompts you for a passphrase when you
activate WEP.  This passphrase is used to generate the hexadecimal WEP
key (using an Apple proprietary algorithm)
There is an option in the Airport Admin utility to get the equivalent
hexadecimal key : just clik the password icon in the toolbar.

This is described in
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106864

Problem #2 : restricted versus open mode

Having finally found and used the correct encryption key, my system was
still not working.
I reminded some old post from Linuxant's support asking to try the
restricted mode instead of the (default) open mode for encryption and it
solves my problem.

This can be done with "iwconfig <interface> key <your_hex_key>
restricted" and restarting the dhcpcd daemon

This worked by hand, but not automatically from SuSE supplied script at
boot time.

To have it working automatically, I have added a line in
/etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-<your interface> :
WIRELESS_KEY_MODE='XXX' where XXX can be empty or "open" or "restricted"
I also have modified the /etc/sysconfig/network/scripts/ifup-wireless
script to take this into account (the patch file is attached - just type
patch < ifup-wireless.patch in the /etc/sysconfig/network/scripts
directory and answer y if asked to Reverse apply the patch)

Hope this can help SuSE / Apple users

Kind regards,
 


-- 
Sebastien Stormacq
 
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Sebastien Stormacq                      Sun Microsystems Luxembourg
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                                        Mobile: +352 021 503 626
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