wpa_supplicant Linux documentation page

wpa_supplicant is a userspace application which works as a WPA supplicant and SME (to handle initiating MLME commands). This page is dedicated only to the documentation relating to the Linux aspects of wpa_supplicant. For further documentation please refer to:

wpa_supplicant's home page
Latest README and well-commented configuration file

Supported Linux wireless cards/drivers

Linux drivers that support Linux Wireless Extensions v19 or newer with WPA/WPA2 extensions
All Linux mac80211 drivers
Host AP driver for Prism2/2.5/3 (WPA and WPA2)
Linuxant DriverLoader with Windows NDIS driver supporting WPA/WPA2
Agere Systems Inc. Linux Driver (Hermes-I/Hermes-II chipset) (WPA, but not WPA2)
madwifi (Atheros ar521x)
ATMEL AT76C5XXx
Linux ndiswrapper
Broadcom wl.o driver
Wired Ethernet drivers

Download

Please refer to the wpa_supplicant home page for release information

http://w1.fi/wpa_supplicant/

Git

You can clone this tree:

git://w1.fi/srv/git/hostap.git

If you have to use http you can also use:

http://w1.fi/hostap.git

For your convenience we have here a few shortcuts:

Developer's documentation

Developers' documentation for wpa_supplicant 0.6.x

Mailing lists

Bugs / feature requests

If you want to make sure your bug report of feature request does not get lost, please report it through the bug tracking system as a new bug/feature request.

http://w1.fi/bugz/enter_bug.cgi

Setting the regulatory domain

You can add a line to your wpa_supplicant configuration file which specifies the ISO / IEC 3166 country code. This is available as of wpa_supplicant version 0.6.7.

country=US

Enabling control interface and nl80211 driver

New wpa_supplicant (as of commit cd27df100b from git) command line options

-o<driver> and -O<ctrl>

can now be used to override the parameters received in add interface command from dbus or global ctrl_interface. This can be used to enable a control interface when using NetworkManager or Connman or change the wpa_supplicant driver used.

The wpa_supplicant control interface is used by wpa_cli and wpa_gui to control wpa_supplicant. GUI applications use the DBUS service file to run wpa_supplicant with specific parameters. You can edit this file to take advantage of these new changes.

The wpa_supplicant service file is typically available on systems in the following location:

/usr/share/dbus-1/system-services/fi.epitest.hostap.WPASupplicant.service

This service file typically looks like this:

[D-BUS Service]
Name=fi.epitest.hostap.WPASupplicant
Exec=/sbin/wpa_supplicant -u -f /var/log/wpa_supplicant.log
User=root

Change it as follows to enable usage of wpa_cli or wpa_gui and also to use nl80211 when available:

[D-BUS Service]
Name=fi.epitest.hostap.WPASupplicant
Exec=/sbin/wpa_supplicant -u -onl80211 -O/var/run/wpa_supplicant
User=root

If you are compiling the supplicant you will want CONFIG_CTRL_IFACE_DBUS=y to enable -u, CONFIG_DRIVER_NL80211=y for -onl80211 and CONFIG_CTRL_IFACE=y for the control interface. To enable usage of wpa_cli you will also want CONFIG_READLINE=y. Also enable CONFIG_DEBUG_FILE=y for the debug file.

WPS and WEP

The Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS; originally Wi-Fi Simple Config, or WSC) 2.0 specification added explicit requirement that disallows use of WEP. wpa_supplicant complies with that requirement and rejects WEP networks if WPS 2.0 is enabled. It should also be noted that there has been a number of interoperability issues with WEP and WPS 1.0 since this combination has never been tested in WFA certification programs.

Hidden SSID are explicitly disallowed with WPS.