[solved] Connecting to Hidden ESSID

[Alexander Barnes]

Hi,
I've got a wireless router at home and I've been keeping the ESSID broadcast disabled. I use this with my laptop at home. With windows, I still connect no problems. Using Linux, I'm finding:

1) I can enable broadcast, connect, and disable broadcast - stays connected
2) I am not connected next time I turn on my laptop.

Using iwlist scan I can see the network - but using iwconfig shows that its not associated. Is there something I'm missing that can get linux to associate with the wireless network even when its hidden (I know the network name and key)?

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Thanks in advance for any suggestions. Meantime, I can work around by enabling broadcast when I log on to the network (plugging in to the lan wire first, but its a bit of a bother). I'm leaving out some details on equipment since 1) my laptops at home right now, and 2) everything works fine when broadcasting is on, so it doesn't seem to be a hardware problem.

Alex

[sithlord48]

Re: Connecting to Hidden ESSID

there is a bug in the network manager that does not allow you to connect to hidden essid networks. it says so in the release notes for 9.04 look in the known issues section.

release note for kubuntu 9.04

you could always try to install wicd and use it as your network manager (i use it on my laptop since 8.10's issues w/ wep/wpa networks)

its ezer this time around cause its in the repos all you need to do is install it

sudo apt-get install wicd

then after it installs (it needs to remove the other network managers) you can start it by typing in to krunner (alt+f2 is default) wicd-client then you should see it in your tray, after that you should not have to start it again.

[Alexander Barnes]

Re: Connecting to Hidden ESSID

Thanks Sithlord. This is almost perfect.

Found it to be just a little quirky with wicd too:
1) Took me about 45 minutes to realize that in the wicd gui you can click the network to "expand" the network details and get to the advanced settings - where the passkey goes. I'm mentioning this in case if it helps someone else down the road!!
2) I had to open broadcasting once for wicd, but now I can connect without doing that. I'm also mentioning this in case its helpful to someone else.
3) Once I add the hidden essid and give wicd its name it is listed twice (once "named" and once "hidden") - seems to be a number of posts about this on the web. It doesn't seem to be able to save this information or figure out that it is the same network I'm trying to tell it about! More importantly, the information needs to be re-added when I re-start my laptop.
4) Even though network-manager-gnome is supposedly uninstalled automatically when you install wicd, it is still "there" -- and seems to work too! (System | Adminstration | Network -- bringing up the Network Administration Tool dialog with the title Network Settings - I'm assuming this is one and the same as gnome network manager). But the command

sudo /etc/init.d/network-manager status

returns "command not found". So that would mean its gone. Kind of a mystery I guess. But it doesn't seem to be a problem.

On the whole though this is a big improvement. I can connect from the laptop by typing in the network name in the wicd gui, and hitting connect. wicd seems like a good utility so I'm glad to find out about it. Perhaps I'm being too careful about not broadcasting my essid - to me it seems one more layer of security a cracker would need to pass through (the essid) - but maybe I'm wrong that it makes any difference. I do use a strong key with letters and numbers and no dictionary words in it.

Alex

[sithlord48]

Re: Connecting to Hidden ESSID

your network-manager error is because when you installed wicd it removed network-manager (they don't get along) you gui is lying to you it can't be there cause there confilct with one another

glad to hear that your stuff is working correctly now, i don't hide my essid i just mac filter my clients

[Alexander Barnes]

Re: Connecting to Hidden ESSID

Thanks. Yeah, I decided I was being too careful probably anyway. I enabled broadcasting and set up the mac filtering. Did beef up my network just a little bit more though too...everything works a treat.

Alex

[Alexander Barnes]

Re: [solved] Connecting to Hidden ESSID

Hmmm...well to keep reporting my findings, I did find I could go into synaptic and mark the network packages for complete removal. This didn't remove the old gui tool, though, which seems to still work (it writes to /etc/network/interfaces ... maybe linux isn't using that file with wicd now). That's probably all I'll ever learn as everything seems to work fine now! But if I discover anything else I'll make a note.

Yeah, it's kind of gnome thing too. Maybe its time to put KDE on my laptop anyway....

Alex

EDIT:
And a little more information (now a week later). I've decided that the original GUI tool I was using was not a network manager. My guess is that its just a basic network utility to edit the /etc/network/interfaces file and /etc/hosts file, and maybe one or two more things along those lines. Anyway, being utterly clueless it was all I'd ever used to connect to any networks. This is apparently the "network adminstrator tool" (https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NetworkAdmin). So anyway, installing wicd (which works just fine) does indeed uninstall network manager and everything is working fine now.

[sithlord48]

Re: [solved] Connecting to Hidden ESSID

theres nothing wrong with Gnome or KDE. they both have there advantages. you could always have them both installed by installing the "kubuntu-desktop" package it will ask you if you want gdm or kdm for your log in manager just leave it as gdm (you can change it later if you want to drop gnome) then b4 u log in click on the sessions button and you can select kde for you next session. then log in to a nice new kde enviroment (you can change back to gnome w/ sessions again on your log in screen)