while i’ve been using knetworkmanager and its side-kick kicker applet rather successfully on our private laptops (all running kubuntu now), it’s never been an option for my IBM laptop (both meanings of the words apply here :-) as we are using the IEEE8021X variant (with X.509 certificates) for controlling access to the internal network — something which knetworkmanager does not seem to support.

what i’ve been using is a pre-up script to start wpa_supplicant on my WLAN interface. that usually works ok — it usually does fail once i try to access a public WLAN or my private WLAN at home: then it becomes an elaborate dance of killing the ipw3945 daemon (the X60 has an intel ipw3945 WLAN card), unloading the ipw3945 module, waiting a bit, and reload the the ipw3945 module…followed by hoping that wpa_supplicant will pick up the current WLAN…which it very often does but then doesn’t get the DHCP lease…hmph :-(

my first attempt was to use debian’s wpa-roam feature (kubuntu being a debian based system): works nicely with the work network and our WPA/WPA2 setup at home — but fails to pickup public WLANs after a suspend–resume cycle :-(

next attempt (after trying all kinds of things…long story) is to use the managed approach in /etc/network/interfaces:

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet manual
        wpa-driver wext

iface default inet dhcp

iface home inet dhcp
        wpa-ssid                homessid
        wpa-ap-scan             2
        wpa-scan-ssid           1
        wpa-psk                 secret
        wpa-proto               RSN
        wpa-key-mgmt            WPA-PSK
        wpa-pairwise            CCMP

iface otherhome inet dhcp
        wpa-ssid                otherhomessid
        wpa-ap-scan             2
        wpa-scan-ssid           1
        wpa-psk                 anothersecret
        wpa-key-mgmt            WPA-PSK
        wpa-pairwise            CCMP

iface work inet dhcp
        wpa-ssid                WORK
        wpa-ap-scan             2
        wpa-scan-ssid           1
        wpa-key-mgmt            IEEE8021X
        wpa-pairwise            TKIP
        wpa-group               WEP104
        wpa-eap                 TLS
        wpa-identity            identity@work.com
        wpa-ca-cert             /home/dirk/certificates/work-root-cert.pem
        wpa-client-cert         /home/dirk/certificates/dirk-cert.pem"
        wpa-private-key         /home/dirk/certificates/dirk-key.pem"
        wpa-private-key-passwd  yetanothersecret

iface public inet dhcp
        wpa-ssid                ""
        wpa-ap-scan             2
        wpa-scan-ssid           1
        wpa-key-mgmt            NONE

i’m making use of the logical interface concept of kubuntu/debian here. to activate the WLAN for at home use i’d do:

ifup wlan0=home

to shut it down again, a simple

ifdown wlan0

does the job. likewise for the other WLANs.

that finally does seem to do the trick. :-)