Connecting linux laptop to eduStar networks

11 Mar 2012

      Hi, 

I'm attempting to connect my linux laptop to my government school's
wifi network via wpa_supplicant. 

Firstly, I've been given some instructions for network-manager, which
are as follows:

   open network manager (probably top right) and manually add a new
   wireless
   network

   use eduSTAR as the SSID
   Security: WPA & WPA2 enterprise - (WPA2)
   Authentication: TLS
   Identity: host/8808-DDLINUX.services.education.vic.gov.au
   user certificate: point to extracted folder: computers.crt
   CA Certificate: point to the extracted folder:  cacert.pem
   Private key: point to the extracted folder: key.pem
   Password: password

Next I've looked through some example wpasupplicant config files and
also consulted man wpa_supplicant.conf 
And developed the following:

network={
        ssid="example wpa2-eap network"
        key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
        proto=WPA2
        pairwise=CCMP
        group=CCMP
        eap=TLS
        identity="user@example.com"
        ca_cert="/etc/cert/ca.pem"
        client_cert="/etc/cert/user.pem"
        private_key="/etc/cert/user.prv"     
        private_key_passwd="PKCS#12 passhrase"
}

Next I modify this file for my school's network according to the
instructions I got at the top. 

network={
        ssid="eduSTAR"
        key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
        proto=WPA2
#        pairwise=CCMP
#        group=CCMP
        eap=TLS
        identity="host/8808-DDLINUX.services.education.vic.gov.au"
        ca_cert="/path/to/cacert.pem"
        client_cert="/path/to/computers.crt"
        private_key="/path/to/cacert.pem"
        private_key_passwd="password"
}

I'm suspecting this probably won't work though since it's usually the
case:)
So some questions:

1) HOw do I make this configuration file accurately reflect the
configuration for this network, according to the instructions for
network-manager?
2. Do I need those lines which I commented out in my final configuration
file which has been modified to reflect the information my school
provided me (my last paste) 
3. The original "private_key" certificate in the raw instructions I got
from the man page was a "prv" file. However, my school says to use the
.pem file. Will this work? 
4. The same is true for client_cert, the original config specifies a
"pem" file while my school says to use the "crt" file. 
Which makes me a bit confused about what to do for 3 and 4.

So does anyone have any ideas how to make this network configuration
likely work? 

I haven't tested it yet, but I thought I'd try and get it as perfect as
I could first before testing since I don't really know what I'm doing :)

Thanks very much for any help. 

Dan

Connecting linux laptop to eduStar networks

Daniel Dalton