ESSIDSCAN(8)

💖 ESSIDSCAN — the essidscan(8) glow-up ✨

okay so bestie, welcome to essidscan, section 8 of the manual (that's the Commands girly, iykyk) 💅. It's a little utility that sniffs out which ESSID you're on and helps your network interfaces figure out who they're supposed to be today. Let's get into it 🎀

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🌸 NAME 🌸

essidscan — scan for the ESSID that goes with whatever WLAN access points are hanging around, no cap 🔥

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

Drop this into /etc/network/interfaces:

In /etc/network/interfaces:

mapping <interface> script essidscan

that's the whole vibe. one line. slay 🫶

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

So like, essidscan exists to tell ifup and ifdown what the current SSID of the WLAN you're chillin' on actually is 📡. That way you can map an SSID name straight onto an iface stanza — which is honestly giving main character energy for your network config.

it literally matches up the SSID name to the stanza. iconic behavior. 👑

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🍓 CONFIGURATION 🍓

a sample /etc/network/interfaces could look exactly like this, no changes, bestie — copy it verbatim:

mapping hotplug
  script /etc/network/essidscan
  map SSIDONE  wlan-work
  map SSIDTWO  wlan-work
  map HOME

iface wlan-work inet dhcp
  wireless-key     1234-5678-9ABC-DEF0-1234-5678-9A
  wireless-keymode restricted

iface HOME inet static
  address          192.168.2.4
  netmask          255.255.255.0
  gateway          192.168.2.1
  wireless-essid   HOME
  wireless-key     s:somepassword
  wireless-keymode open

iface DEFAULT inet dhcp

see how SSIDONE and SSIDTWO both map to wlan-work? that's a polyamorous mapping situation and we love that for them 💜

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🧚 FILES 🧚

• /etc/network/interfaces — the interfaces definition file, aka the blueprint, the moment, the blueprint-moment 📜
• /etc/network/run/ifstate — a record of the current state of the interfaces, and it's managed by ifup and ifdown (they're the ones keeping receipts, not you 🙈)

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🌈 SEE ALSO 🌈

interfaces(5) ifscheme(8) ifup(8) ifdown(8)

go read those next, bestie, they're all connected fr fr 🔗

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👑 AUTHORS 👑

Tor Slettnes <tor@slett.net> — the legend who made this happen 💖

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and that's the tea 🎀 this was ESSIDSCAN(8), out here doing the absolute most in the Commands section — bye bestie, go configure something iconic ✨💅