# ** Note: This page is obsolete and this method should not be used since it will not work ** 
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Setting up a wireless card with WPA
## 1. What do we need? 
First of all, your wireless adapter must be supported in DragonFlyBSD. Actually you can take a look at man pages for several drivers:


* ath(4) for Atheros IEEE 802.11 wireless network driver

* an(4) for Aironet Communications 4500/4800 wireless network adapter driver

* wi(4) for WaveLAN/IEEE, PRISM-II and Spectrum24 802.11DS wireless network

* acx(4) for Texas Instruments ACX100/TNETW1130(ACX111) IEEE 802.11 driver

* ipw(4) for Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2100 IEEE 802.11 driver

* iwi(4) for Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 2200BG/2915ABG IEEE 802.11 driver

* ray(4) for Raytheon Raylink/Webgear Aviator PCCard driver
You need to configure it properly before going on with this article. For example, for ath driver you need to set some values on /boot/loader.conf.

Now, we have to get*** wpa_supplicant ***script provided in ftp://quantumachine.net/scripts/wpa_supplicant **** 

 **** 

 **Note for ath driver users** 

At the moment of writing this document there was a problem with model PCI1410 of cardbus controller. Due this, you will get some*** HAL status ***errors when loading ath driver.

You can fix this by applying this patch: ftp://quantumachine.net/patches/cbb_020407.diff

Then you must compile and install your kernel. If you still have problems with it, please post your comments in the mailing lists.

## 2. /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf 
We need to configure this file since it's needed by wpa_supplicant to properly hand-shake. **** Here we have an example and some comments on how to do it:

    
    ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
    ctrl_interface_group=wheel
    network={
            ssid="myssid"
            psk="mypass"
    }

***ctrl_interface*** is the path where unix domain sockets are stored. Those sockets are files that will be used for some programs so they can communicate with wpa_supplicant, like wpa_cli(8).

***ctrl_interface_group*** indicates a group of users that can work with those control interface files without the need of being root.

***network*** section is more complicated, but here we only show two settings. ***ssid*** that indicates network name and ***psk*** that indicates password for WPA-PSK.  If you want further information, please review wpa_supplicant.conf(5)

It's very important to set owner, group and permissions for this file:

    
    chown root:wheel /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
    chmod 640 /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

With this, only root can write and read it. Users in wheel will only be able to read it.

## 3. wpa_supplicant script 
This script should be copied into ***/etc/rc.d/*** directory so when system boots, it will start wpa_supplicant to get an association, hand-shake and connect into the network. Following steps should be used or similar ones:

    
    su -
    Password:
    cp wpa_supplicant /etc/rc.d
    chown root:wheel /etc/rc.d/wpa_supplicant
    chmod 555 /etc/rc.d/wpa_supplicant

## 4. rc.conf modification 
We have to add the following lines to our*** /etc/rc.conf***:

    
    wpa_supplicant_enable=YES
    wpa_supplicant_flags="-i ifX -B -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf"
    ifconfig_ifX="dhcp"

You should note that it's required to replace*** ifX ***with your network adapter interface. Two first lines are required for*** /etc/rc.d/wpa_supplicant. ***It's very important that you add in flags ***-B ***because with this, wpa_supplicant will be backgrounded.

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 . CategoryHowTo .