how to connect to wifi on ubuntu server 10.10

Question

i will be installing ubuntu server and since its all through terminal how do i connect to wifi?

what commands do i type in to connect and enter the passsword?

thanks

Answer 1

The configuration is all done through the /etc/network/interfaces file.

You need to have something like this in your /etc/network/interfaces file:

(this is for a WPA2 encrypted network)

auto wlan0

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
    wpa-driver wext
    wpa-ssid AccessPointName
    wpa-ap-scan 2
    wpa-proto RSN
    wpa-pairwise CCMP
    wpa-group CCMP
    wpa-key-mgmt WPA-PSK
    wpa-psk <your_hex_key>

Where <your_hex_key> is obtained by using:

# wpa_passphrase "Access Point Name" "WPA2 Pass Phrase"

You can change the network to use "static" instead of "dhcp" if you want to use a static IP address. You can then specify something like this:

address 192.168.1.44
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1

in the main block of configuration.