[driverloader] Airport Extreme & Red Hat 9

[Linuxant support]

Hi,

I just want to point out that the leading "0x" is not always needed to enter
a key in the HEX format. That depends on the Linux distribution and which
mecanism is used to read the key from the interface configuration file.

For example, with RedHat, you simply put "KEY=ABCDEF1234567890ABCDEF1234" in
the file '/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0' (if your interface is
named "wlan0").

Also, when entering the key directly with "iwconfig", it will expect the key
to be in HEX format unless you put "s:" in front of it. The "s:" syntax is
used to enter the key as an ASCII string. "iwconfig" does not yet support
entering a pass phrase directly.

Sometimes it is necessary to prepend or append the key word "open" or
"restricted" to the key and force the same setting on the access point.

Regards,

Jean-Simon Durand
Technical specialist / Linuxant
www.linuxant.com
support at linuxant.com


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mat Ellis" <mat.ellis at mac.com>
To: "Dimitris Stasinopoulos" <dsta at linea.gr>
Cc: <driverloader at lists.linuxant.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 08, 2004 1:30 AM
Subject: Re: [driverloader] Airport Extreme & Red Hat 9


Dimitris

I'm sure you've tried this already, but for the benefit of others....

Non-Apple wireless clients must have the WEP key entered in hexadecimal
when using an Apple Airport base station. Only Apple clients can take
the key in it's string form, e.g.

On base station: 'Wireless Security' password entered as '128-bit WEP'
password 'foobar'
On Apple client: Airport network name '<whatever>', password 'foobar'
On Windoze client: Network name '<whatever>', wep key 'ABCDEF1234' (put
Hex equivalent)
On Linux client: Network name '<whatever>', key '0xABCDEF1234' (put Hex
equivalent but with '0x' in front)

You can get the hex version of your password by going to the Airport
Admin utility, selecting your base station, select button 'Show All
Settings' and then select 'Equivalent Network Password...' from the
menu 'Base Station'.

With this method, I've been able to successfully connect XP clients to
my Apple base stations for nearly a year.

Apologies for slightly off-topic response but relevant for anyone
trying to get their Linux boxes going with their Apple base stations.

M.