Linux (Debian)

These instructions are aimed at Debian distribution. However, with small changes, they should work with other Linux distros. We assume that you have your wireless adapter driver already installed. For help on this, consult this website . For Intel Centrino Chipset, you can download Linux binaries driver from Intel website. Finally, if your driver is only supported in Windows (such as the Broadcom chipset), you can try out the Ndiswrapper driver. For now we assume the wireless interface is “wlan0” and your wireless driver is ndiswrapper. The following steps need to be done in a root shell.

1. Install wpa supplicant (a supplicant is an 802.1x client) and wireless tools by running:

$apt-get install wpasupplicant wireless-tools

2. Download the CA certificate here and save it under /etc/certs/ as eduroam-ca.crt

3. Unzip the file from /usr/share/doc/wpasupplicant/examples/wpa_supplicant.conf.gz to /etc/ and add the following:

network={
ssid="eduroam"
scan_ssid=1
key_mgmt=WPA-EAP IEEE8021X
pairwise=CCMP TKIP
group=CCMP TKIP
phase2="auth=PAP"
eap=TTLS
ca_cert=”/etc/certs/eduroam-ca.crt”
subject_match="eduroam-gateway.mq.edu.au"
identity=”MQ20011234@mq.edu.au”
password=”my-password-in-plaintext”
}

Make sure you change the appropriate values for your identity and password.

4. As root run the following commands:

$ifconfig wlan0 up
$iwconfig wlan0 mode managed
$iwconfig wlan0 essid eduroam
$wpa_supplicant -D ndiswrapper -i wlan0 -B
$dhclient wlan0

In the above, step 4 starts the wpa supplicant as a daemon which connects to the radius server and authenticates you. Once authenticated, the interface will obtain IP address and DNS server via the DHCP server of your wireless access point.