<Livebox Issues? ~ HOWTO: Connect wirelessly to the Livebox in Linux
alleluia20
Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 10:16 pm
Joined: 01 Jul 2007Posts: 6
Here it is! What you all were waiting for!!!!!
Of course, even the mole of Orange who monitors this site was waiting for it. Mole, please, can you tell your company to offer me the broadband for free for the rest of my life?, as now workers in the call centre won't need to hide under the table every time they hear the word "Linux".
Moderator, please, will you make this post sticky!!!!!
Disclaimer: I think that all I am going to write is correct at the date I am writing it, but trust it or not at your own risk.
First of all, switch the Livebox to WPA mode only, for two reasons: it is more secure, and the computer will not confuse.
But, still, on the Livebox configuration you have to enter a WEP key, and 26 character long. What was the not-so-competent designer of the Livebox meaning?
We need a bit of technical things. Impatient readers can skip it. Big thanks to Bryan Kadzban, without him I would not have been able to connect, and this post would have been impossible.:
WPA keys' hexadecimal values are not 26 characters long. However, WEP-104 keys are (WEP-104 is also sometimes called WEP-128 by vendors that try to make it seem better than it really is. It only uses 104 bits' worth of key material. 104 bits is 13 bytes, which is 26 hex characters).
On the other hand, WPA-PSK keys are 32 bytes (256 bits) long, which is 64 characters. There's also a hash function that will combine an ASCII string (<=63 characters' worth) with the SSID (the "name" of the wifi you see from your computer) to generate a 256-bit key.
So, what's on here? As the key in the router is less than 64 characters long, the "WEP key" entered in the router is no longer a hexadecimal key. The "WEP key" is now actually an ASCII passphrase, and gets hashed ("combined") with the SSID to generate the real key, There is no way to treat a 26-character string as a hex WPA key; WPA keys are 256 bits long.
Mole, are you still reading? Please tell those sloppy people to upgrade the software of the Livebox so every people can understand it
Rest of the readers, please wake up Now we are going to the howto itself:
I assume that you have the wifi card well configured in Linux. Try connecting to a non-encrypted wifi and, in case you can't, please solve the problem before doing anything else.
You must have wpasupplicant (to handle the encryption) and dhclient (to obtain the network configuration by DHCP) installed. With Debian type as root
apt-get install wpasupplicant dhcp3-client
With Ubuntu, I suppose it is the same but typing sudo at the beginning. With other distros, help yourself Of course, you must have a wired connection to do that Anyway, probably you do not need to install those packages because they are actually already installed.
All the commands that follow must be executed as root (in Ubuntu, with sudo).
Just in case you have other wpasupplicant processes running, stop them:
killall wpa_supplicant
Now we have to run wpa_supplicant to handle the encrytion. We have to create the configuration file (only once)
kwrite /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf (gedit instead of kwrite for gnome users) and we write
network={
ssid="Livebox-***"
psk="what you have in the Livebox in the field WEP key"
}
of course, do not write Livebox-*** , write your real essid. The quotation after psk means that it is not the real key, but a passphrase that will be hashed with the ssid to produce the key.
OK, we save and close the file.
Now, as you are going to connect new hardware, press the button "1" of the Livebox (I did not realise about this f***ing step and I was desperated ).
We start negotiating the WPA with the following command:
of course, replace ath0 by the name of your interface (you can see them all executing ifconfig as root: eth0 is usually the wired, and lo does not apply at all).
Finally, we obtain the network configuration with dhcp:
dhclient ath0
(replace ath0 by your interface).
if you see at the end of the output something like "bound to 192.168.1.20", you are right (the IP does not have to be the same).
Are you too lazy to type two commands every time you start the computer? OK. We can create a script. Go to your home directory and create a document startwifi.sh with this content:
#!/bin/sh
# Execute this script as root
# Stop all the wpa_supplicant processes
killall wpa_supplicant
# Do not forget to press the 1 button of the Livebox the first time!!!
# Start the WPA and run it in background
wpa_supplicant -dd -D wext -i ath0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf &
# Start the DHCP
dhclient ath0
save it and made it executable typing:
chmod u+x startwifi.sh
now go to a console, switch to root and type ./startwifi.sh
You can configure gnome and KDE to execute the script automatically every time you login, but investigate yourself. I am not going to explain everything, am I?
If you have any questions, feel free to write me or leave a reply.
All well and good but do you really expect tech support to know and understand all that for the extremely small minority of users with linux. The time and energy needed to support linux currently far outweighs any benefit they'd receive.
In all my time I have had one customer ask me about linux and that was just a query rather than any sort of technical question. It took them a long time to do MAC support for the livebox and there's literally no demand for linux support. Generally I'd expect any linux user wanting internet access to be very selective over which ISP they choose, proprietry software (eg AOL) and hardware (eg Livebox) would often be straight out the door most of the time.
I am not an expert on marketing, but the broadband market is very competitive, and France Telecom intends (I think) to be in the first positions.
Now, add to the statement above a second statement: the number of Linux users is dramatically increasing, to some extend because of Canonical's marketing (Canonical is the maker of Ubuntu) and, of course, because of Microsoft as well . (Windows Vista is bloated even in the latest hardwares. I mean, all Windows are bloated, but Vista much more than the former ones, although it seems impossible to reach )
Do you want a proof that the number of Linux users is dramatically increasing?: Ballmer is implicitly threatening Linux users and makers with suing them over patent violations (but he does not unveil the patents, I think because he knows that that is not true).
Again, I am not an expert in marketing, but I presume that the first Internet company which keeps an eye on Linux might be the first one to pull it off.
One can argue that Linux users do not need support , and we could debate about it. But it is undebatable that Linux users do need not to be misled, which things like "you are in WPA mode but please enter a WEP key", "it is a hexadecimal WPA key", "hexadecimal WPA keys can be shorter than 64 characters", etc.
Even if it's increasing linux is still in the minority and will be for quite some time.
It's getting closer all the time but it's simply not fully ready for desktop use for the general public IMO. Windows may be bloated but at least installing a wireless adapter is a very simple affair and connecting equally so as you just select your access point and enter the key as needed, none of these commands having to be entered and scripts making just to get it to connect automatically.
Linux will need to take care of these and many other sorts of problems before they really start making major headway into the desktop market.
This was outstandingly helpful, many many thanks. I am a complete Linux newbie, having become so frustrated with Vista <spit> and Office 2007 <double-spit> - but could not get my laptop to connect wirelessly to Orange. .
Not sure how I can make the script run automatically, but that is for another day!
I use Ubuntu 9.10, and connecting wireless was easy - a simple right click on edit connections, click on the wireless tab and entered the passkey from the side of the box.
It took around 15 seconds - once i remembered to press the 'pair' button on the livebox.
The only complaint I have is with the aggressive customer support staff i encountered who could only say 'we dont support linux' - this needs to change, and quick. From my own observations about the operating systems that my friends and family are using (which is how i came to use ubuntu) there are hardly any windows users around!
If someone could post the command to refresh the IP stack on the livebox for when it throws a fit, then i'll have no more need to contact customer support!
From my own observations about the operating systems that my friends and family are using (which is how i came to use ubuntu) there are hardly any windows users around
For those that find their Livebox only receiving but not transmitting (on ethernet), here is the fix:
unplug all other pc's, except the one your fixing it with.
TRY to connect to 192.168.1.1 to connect to the livebox admin page.
If you cannot connect to the admin page, and resetting the livebox has no effect then open terminal and enter:
sudo dhclient -r
enter your linux user password press enter, and your back in business.
If the first attempt fails, re-enter and try again, the most i had to try was 3 attempts, and hence this post.
I gave up and got an old netgear rangemax cable (modemless) router and shoved it on the front of the livebox. cost about £22 and worth it's weight in wifi gold. now i get my wifi from the netgear.
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Now we are going to the howto itself:
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