u l t r a m o o k i e

I got WPA-PSK working with CentOS4. I want to document this for myself, just in case I have to reinstall. Peruse these instructions if they are helpful to you. I got help from the madwifi wiki for a lot of this. This was the page I used, these instructions of mine are tailored to CentOS4.
First, add the atrpms to your yum repos. Create /etc/yum.repos.d/atrpms.repo.

Put inside that file:

[atrpms-stable]
name=RHEL 4 $releasever - $basearch - ATrpms
baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/el$releasever-$basearch/atrpms/stable
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
includepkgs=madwifi* madwifi-kmdl* madwifi-hal-kmdl* libpcsclite1

[atrpms-testing]
name=RHEL 4 $releasever - $basearch - ATrpms
baseurl=http://dl.atrpms.net/el$releasever-$basearch/atrpms/testing
gpgcheck=1
enabled=1
includepkgs=wpa_supplicant wpa_supplicant-gui

By using includepkgs in the repo definition, I can make sure that nothing other than the stuff I need from atrpms gets updated when I run yum updates.

Import atrpms signing key:

rpm --import http://ATrpms.net/RPM-GPG-KEY.atrpms

Change the “enabled” to 1 so that you can do the next installation (then change back to 0 if you don’t want to get updates to your base install):

yum install madwifi-hal-kmdl-`uname -r` madwifi-kmdl-`uname -r` wpa_supplicant wpa_supplicant-gui

You’ll have to edit /etc/modprobe.conf and add:

alias ath0 ath_pci
options ath_pci autocreate=sta

Reboot.

When the system comes up, you’ll want to configure wpa_supplicant for your network:

/usr/sbin/wpa_passphrase YOUR_AP_SSID “YOUR_WPA_PSK_PASSPHRASE” >> /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Edit /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf and add:

key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

proto=WPA

Test that your setup is working:

iwconfig ath0 essid “YOUR_AP_SSID”

ifconfig ath0 SOME_IP_ADDRESS up

/usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -dd -Dmadwifi -iath0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

If you see:

CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to AP_ADDRESS completed (auth)

Then you’re OK.

Now, gettting things automated. First, setup your wireless card like usual in Applications -> System Settings -> Network. Then edit /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-wireless

Add to the end of that file:

/usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -w -B -Dmadwifi -iath0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Test to see that it works with:

/etc/init.d/network restart

If it does, then you’re all done! This wasn’t as easy as getting Ubuntu working with a WPA Wifi network, but I am glad that it works now! There wasn’t much documentation on the internet for getting WPA working with RHEL and CentOS. I found the madwifi stuff by accident and it wasn’t tailored to CentOS (or RHEL). Hopefully this is helpful!