WIRELESS(7)

🦋 WIRELESS(7) 🦋

okay bestie, this is the wireless page from the Linux Programmer's Manual, and it's literally the group chat for all your wireless LAN setup lore. 💖

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✨ NAME ✨

wireless — Wireless Tools and Wireless Extensions 🫶

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

iwconfig
iwpriv -a

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✨ DESCRIPTION ✨

okay so. The Wireless Extensions is an API that lets you manipulate Wireless LAN networking interfaces. It's giving... a whole ecosystem, honestly — it's made up of a variety of tools and configuration files, and if you want the deep lore it's documented in more detail in the Linux Wireless LAN Howto. 📚

The Wireless Tools are what you use to change the configuration of wireless LAN networking interfaces on the fly, to get their current configuration, and to get statistics and diagnose them. They each have their own man page, so scroll down for the references. 💅

Wireless configuration is specific to each Linux distribution, no cap. This man page will contain, in the future, the configuration procedure for a few common distributions. For the time being tho, check the file DISTRIBUTIONS.txt included with the Wireless Tools package. 🎀

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✨ DEBIAN 3.0 ✨

In Debian 3.0 (and later) you can configure wireless LAN networking devices using the network configuration tool ifupdown(8). iconic behaviour tbh. 👑

File: /etc/network/interfaces

Form: wireless-<function> <value>

wireless-essid Home
wireless-mode Ad-Hoc

See also:

• /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wireless-tools
• /usr/share/doc/wireless-tools/README.Debian

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✨ SuSE 8.0 ✨

SuSE 8.0 (and later) has integrated wireless configuration in their network scripts. slay, they were early. 🌸

Tool: Yast2

File:

/etc/sysconfig/network/wireless
/etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-*

Form: WIRELESS_<function>=<value>

WIRELESS_ESSID="Home"
WIRELESS_MODE=Ad-Hoc

See also:

• man ifup
• info scpm

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✨ ORIGINAL PCMCIA SCRIPTS ✨

If you are using the original configuration scripts from the Pcmcia package, you can use this method. vintage vibes fr fr. 🕰️

File: /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts

Form:

*,*,*,*)
   ESSID="Home"
   MODE="Ad-Hoc"
   ;;

See also:

• /etc/pcmcia/wireless
• File PCMCIA.txt part of Wireless Tools package

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✨ AUTHOR ✨

Jean Tourrilhes — jt@hpl.hp.com http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/

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✨ SEE ALSO ✨

iwconfig(8), iwlist(8), iwspy(8), iwpriv(8), iwevent(8).

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ngl bestie, wireless config is a whole journey and every distro does it its own way — vibe check your distro first before you touch anything. 💀

and that's the whole page!! this one's from the wireless-tools era, dated 4 March 2004, and it's WIRELESS(7) if you need to cite it. periodt. 💜✨