How to connect to wireless network from Ubuntu command line (recovery mode)

September 21, 2014 14:54:22 Last update: September 21, 2014 22:29:56

Find out the wireless interface name:
```
# ifconfig
```
I don't know if this helps, but it doesn't hurt:
```
# ifconfig wlan0 up
```
Just to see if wifi works, scan for available wireless networks:
```
# iwlist wlan0 scan
```
Connect (replace SSID with actual id and WIFI_KEY with actual key):
```
# iwconfig wlan0 essid <SSID> key s:<WIFI_KEY>
```
This command failed for me with error:
```
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.
```
The reason being that iwconfig expects a WEP key, but my wifi runs WPA.
So, I need to run wpa_supplicant. With no patience to find out how to do it the Ubuntu way, I created a conf file for wpa_supplicant:
```
network={
	ssid="example"
	proto=WPA
	key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
	pairwise=TKIP
	group=TKIP
	psk="not so secure passphrase"
}
```
But before running my wpa_supplicant, I have to kill the existing one, which didn't seem to to anything.

Stop network manager:
```
# stop network-namager
```
Kill wpa_supplicant:
```
# kill -9 <wpa_supplicant_pid>
```
the -9 switch is important, otherwise it comes back alive immediately.

Start my own wpa_supplicant:

# wpa_supplicant -c /tmp/wpa_supplicant.conf -iwlan0&

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