Brookes eduroam wireless setup for Linux

Remember: you must first register for eduroam@brookes in order to connect to it.

 

You will need a device that supports WPA or WPA2 Enterprise to ensure the security of the connection. Some chipset drivers (e.g. Broadcomm bcm43xx) are supported in recent kernels (>2.6.19) but require firmware extracted from compiled drivers. Other chipsets are not supported but can work by using abstracted Windows drivers though ndiswrapper. You should consult forums or your distributions pages to work out which method is appropriate. The following instructions assume that you have a working wireless adapter.

 

Eee PC: see the Asus Eee PC page for specific information about that platform.

Acer Aspire One: See this external page for details about upgrading NetworkManager on the Acer (Linpus) netbook.

 

You will need the PEM certificates. Download them to a location you can locate in the next step.

 

 

Connect using NetworkManager

NetworkManager is a system tray applet that enables quick and easy access to network settings.

Left click on the NetworkManager applet on the toolbar and click on 'eduroam'. Depending on the application version and/or your distributions package the interface may be different but is likely to be similar to the images below.

 

    

 

You will be prompted for log on details.

 

If necessary change Wireless Security to 'WPA2 Enterprise', EAP Method to 'PEAP', Identity to your username@brookes.ac.uk, enter your password. Click the folder icon next to Client Certificate File which will open a file picker to enable you to choose the eduroam certificate. Click the folder icon next to CA Certificate File so you can select the root certificate.

 

Note: the password is stored in plain text in the NetworkManager configuration file.

 

 

Click 'Login to Network' to initialize the connection.

 

NetworkManager will automatically join eduroam@brookes whenever the signal is available.

 

To manually remove the settings from NetworkManager run the following in a terminal:

rm ~/.gconf/system/networking/wireless/networks/eduroam/%gconf.xml

 

 

Connect manually

Most recent distributions will ship with, or have available in repositories, the wpa_supplicant package for configuring connections. The following is an example wpa_supplicant.conf (usually found in /etc/). You may also have a graphical configuration tool available (e.g. NetworkManager or wpa_gui) which you can use to enter the correct settings.

 

eapol_version=2
network={
   ssid="eduroam"
   mode=0
   proto=WPA2
   key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
   auth_alg=OPEN
   pairwise=CCMP
   group=CCMP
   eap=PEAP
   anonymous_identity="anonymous@brookes.ac.uk"
   identity="USERNAME@brookes.ac.uk"
   password="PASSWORD"
   ca_cert="/path/to/verisign/ca_cert.cer"
   subject_match="eduroam.brookes.ac.uk"
   phase1="peaplabel=0"
   phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
   eap_workaround=0
}

You will need to change the values for identity, password and the path to the ca_cert as appropriate.

 

On line resources

General information about Brookes wireless.

Maps of the Brookes campuses showing signal coverage.

 

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