[pkg-wpa-devel] Bug#678335: Bug#678335: wpa_supplicant.conf(5): please mention where the file is

[Frank Miles]

On Thu, 21 Jun 2012, Stefan Lippers-Hollmann wrote:

> Hi
>
> On Thursday 21 June 2012, Jonathan Nieder wrote:
> […]
>> Frank Miles wrote:
>>
>>> The wpa_supplicant.conf man page has many items of interest, but
>>> lacks _where_ this file is supposed to be.
>>
>> Perhaps a word or two in the DESCRIPTION section could be added to help.
>>
>> 	DESCRIPTION
>>
>> 	This page describes the configuration file named on the
>> 	wpa_supplicant(8) command line:
>>
>> 		wpa_supplicant -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -iwlan0
>>
>> Kel et al: what do you think?
>
> That file can be just about anywhere, as it's always specified with a
> full path
>
> wpa_supplicant.conf(5)
>       All file paths in this configuration file should use full (absolute,  not  relative  to
>       working  directory)  path  in  order to allow working directory to be changed. This can
>       happen if wpa_supplicant is run in the background
>
> both on cli, like you quoted, or using the ifupdown hook through /
> etc/network/interface (network-manager uses DBus) instead):
>
> allow-hotplug wlan0
> iface wlan0 inet manual
>        wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
>
> iface profile_foo inet dhcp
> iface also_profile_bar inet dhcp
> iface work_roaming inet dhcp
> iface default inet dhcp
>
> how you call it, or where you store it, doesn't have any influence on
> its functionality. For debugging, on cli, you might have something in
> $HOME, /root/ might make sense for some uses, personally I like the
> /e/n/i example above - and even the file name can be chosen freely.
>
> Therefore I don't see the documentation problem here, the namespace
> is completely under the authority of the local system administrator,
> and I'm tempted to close this bug.
>
> Regards
> 	Stefan Lippers-Hollmann

-----------------

The piece that I was missing was specifying the wpa_supplicant.conf file in
/etc/network/interfaces.  While I'm sure that networking experts would
find this obvious, AFAICS neither the wpa_supplicant man pages, nor the
/etc/network/interfaces man page indicate this linkage.  Once I found how
to specify the wpa_supplicant.conf file in the /etc/network/interfaces file
it all made much more sense and I was able to make it work.

Thanks for your concern!  (Someone else posted it as a 'bug'.)

 	-Frank Miles
 	(biomedical engineer)