WPA_ACTION(8)

💖 WPA_ACTION 💖

okay bestie, welcome to the wpa_action manual page — section 8, system administration tools, iykyk ✨

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🌸 NAME 🌸

wpa_action — it's the wpa_cli action script. that's the whole vibe. 🎀

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✨ SYNOPSIS ✨

wpa_action IFACE ACTION

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

so wpa_action is a shell script, right? and its whole job is controlling the ifupdown framework based on the ACTION events it gets handed from wpa_supplicant. the way it works is: wpa_cli receives the CONNECTED and DISCONNECTED events from wpa_supplicant through the crtl_iface socket, and then it gives that ACTION event to the wpa_action script as an argument — along with the IFACE it's supposed to act upon. iconic teamwork honestly. 🫶

wpa_action also receives an environment variable from wpa_cli called WPA_ID_STR, which holds an alphanumeric identification string for the CURRENT network block. WPA_ID_STR is provided by the 'id_str' network block option of wpa_supplicant.conf, and it gives you a way to map the ACTION to a LOGICAL interface that's configured in the interfaces file. it's giving ✨mapping✨.

if either the ifupdown interfaces file or the ifstate file can't be found, wpa_action will exit silently (status 0). no drama, no error, just gone. 💀

wpa_action will search these locations to check whether they exist:

• /etc/network/run/ifstate
• /run/network/ifstate
• /etc/network/interfaces

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🎀 IFACE 🎀

the network interface that's getting acted upon — like 'eth1' or 'wlan0'. simple as that, no cap.

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💅 ACTION 💅

an ACTION that gets performed on the IFACE. here's the menu of options, bestie:

CONNECTED

wpa_supplicant has finished authentication, periodt. 🎉 ifup IFACE=WPA_ID_STR is invoked, and the action gets logged to syslog. network settings for the LOGICAL interface WPA_ID_STR are applied.

DISCONNECTED

wpa_supplicant has detected a disconnection 😭. ifdown IFACE=WPA_ID_STR is invoked, and the action gets logged to syslog. network settings for the LOGICAL interface WPA_ID_STR are undone.

stop

the 'stop' ACTION is called manually by the user, to stop the wpa_cli daemon, invoke ifdown IFACE (if the IFACE is present in the ifstate file) and stop the wpa_supplicant daemon.

reload

the 'reload' ACTION can be used to reload the wpa_supplicant configuration file specified by wpa-roam . and 'restart' is a synonym for 'reload', so you can use them equally, no favourites here. the action is logged to /var/log/wpa_action.log.

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🌈 ENVIRONMENT 🌈

an alphanumeric identification string provided by the 'id_str' network block option of wpa_supplicant.conf gets exported to wpa_action as an environment variable, WPA_ID_STR. and when 'id_str' is not configured for the CURRENT network block, 'default' is substituted in for that absent WPA_ID_STR environment variable. the substitute teacher of env vars fr fr.

a unique network identifier, WPA_ID, is also exported to wpa_action. it's the number assigned to the CURRENT wpa_supplicant network block (network_id).

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⭐ USAGE ⭐

ngl, the only reasons you'd ever explicitly run wpa_action yourself are to stop wpa_cli from controlling ifupdown, or to reload the wpa_supplicant.conf file after you've edited it. those are the only two.

wpa_action eth1 stop

otherwise, wpa_action gets handed to a wpa_cli daemon as an argument:

wpa_cli -i eth1 -a /usr/sbin/wpa_action -B

and you can do all of this by using the wpa-roam option in the interfaces file. wpa-roam takes one argument — a user provided wpa_supplicant.conf file. 👑

the inet METHOD must be 'manual' for this interface, because it's going to be configured according to wpa_cli action events. also supply a 'default' interfaces stanza using the dhcp inet METHOD, so that networks without an 'id_str' option can fallback to attempting to receive an ip via dhcp. and if one or more networks requires additional network configuration, provide a unique 'id_str' for each network, plus an interfaces stanza that uses the 'id_str' value as a LOGICAL interface.

the following interfaces file is configured to use dhcp for any network without an 'id_str', a static ip for the network with an 'id_str' of 'home_static', and dhcp plus an additional post-up command for the network with an 'id_str' of 'uni'. look at her go. 🌟

here's an example wpa_supplicant.conf configured to roam between 3 different networks:

network={
     ssid="foo"
     id_str="uni"
     key_mgmt=NONE
}

network={
     ssid="bar"
     id_str="home_static"
     psk=123456789...
}

network={
     ssid=""
     key_mgmt=NONE
}

and the corresponding interfaces file would contain LOGICAL interfaces that correlate to each unique 'id_str' provided by the configuration file:

iface eth1 inet manual
     wpa-driver wext
     wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

iface default inet dhcp

iface uni inet dhcp

iface home_static inet static
        address 192.168.0.20
        netmask 255.255.255.0
        network 192.168.0.0
        broadcast 192.168.0.255
        gateway 192.168.0.1

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

• wpa_cli(8)
• wpa_supplicant(8)
• wpa_supplicant.conf(5)
• ifup(8)
• interfaces(5)

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👑 AUTHOR 👑

this manual page was written by Kel Modderman <kel@otaku42.de> for the Debian GNU system (but may be used by others). we stan. 💜

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okay that's the whole page bestie, you ate it, you understood it, main character energy all around 🌈💖

this little gem comes from the WPA_ACTION(8) manual, dated 26 May 2006 — so yes, she's vintage, she's iconic, and she still runs the ifupdown roost. mwah. 💅✨🎀🦋🌸🫶