wpa_supplicant and open wifi networks on FreeBSD
October 03, 2023 —
Nico Cartron
I struggled a bit to connect to an open wifi on my FreeBSD laptop
My FreeBSD Wifi setup
I haven't bothered installing a Wifi management tool on my FreeBSD Lenovo T440p laptop, since I want to keep the desktop environment as minimal as possible.
I successfully connect to protected Wifi networks, by updating my
/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
file, with something like:
network={
ssid="<SSID_NAME>"
scan_ssid=0
psk="<PASSWORD>"
priority=100
}
and playing with the priority - highest priority wins (as in: 150 wins over 100).
Open Wifi networks
The problem
When trying the above with an open Wifi network, it would not connect.
What I did was just removing the line with psk
.
The solution
It turns out you just need to play with the key_mgmt
directive, and set it to
NONE:
network={
ssid="@Hyatt_WiFi"
scan_ssid=0
key_mgmt=NONE
priority=50
}
Then restart your network with
service netif restart
And you'll be connected to the configured open Wifi network!