I am looking for some advice on managing wireless connections with wpa_supplicant. First some background on what I have done so far. My build is LFS 7.9-systemd built on a 32GB USB flash drive with the following from BLFS installed:

Nano-2.3.6
cpio-2.11
Lynx-2.8.8
OpenSSL-1.0.1.1i
OpenSSH-6.6p1
Wget-1.15
GPM-1.20.7
Sudo-1.8.10p3
Which-2.20
pciutils-3.2.1
Wireless Tools-29
wpa_supplicant-2.2

I created configuration files for systemd-networkd to use dhcp for both wired and wireless connections. I then created a wpa_supplicant configuration file (/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlp2s0.conf) for wlp2s0 and added information for my home and work router. Everything works when used on the same laptop at home or at work. But when I booted to a different laptop at work, the interface was no longer wlp2s0, but was wlp5s0. To make it work, I created a link to the wlp2s0 file (/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlp5s0.conf -> /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlp2s0.conf), enabled it, and this worked.

Now for my question. Is there a better way to handle this situation when booting on different computers? Perhaps a way to force the wifi interface (if one exists) to be named the same thing no matter what computer it is booted on? This is my first LFS build, so I will appreciate any comments or criticism on what I have done so far, or any advice on how to proceed from here. Thanks!

Hi

You can create a /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules file

you would have to change the 00:13:02:af:ed:e0 to the mac address of the device/s

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks spiky, but I don't think that will do what I want. If I understand correctly, your proposal would name a specific network card to wlan0. If I boot the USB flash drive on the same computer, I am pretty sure the name that udev assigned is consistent. It is when I boot my system on a different computer, (with a different network card) that I get a different name.

What I am asking for is if there is a way to assign the first wireless interface found (if any) on any computer to a specific name so I wouldn't have to add a separate configuration file for wpa_supplicant to recognize the card. The way I am doing it now is fine for my purposes, but in the interest of learning I was wondering if there is a way to accomplish this. Thanks again for your help.

create for each card that you have


so my thoughts were it would pick up the mac address for the card, Assign it to wlan0 each card would have different mac addresses
but the mac address would only work as per card present in what ever machine


It wont hurt to try it

FYI

I have 2 cards so name wlan0 and wlan1. and give each 1 there own config
same princable

1 members found this post helpful.

I see now. Thanks for teaching me this. I will play around with this option. I may end up sticking with creating a new config for wpa_supplicant instead, but I like that I learned to use another tool. I'll do some searching, but do you know what to use to activate the new rules without rebooting?

you could try
But a reboot might be nessecary