Is there a way force openrc and wpa_supplicant to map a particular
access point to an interface or fail?

I have two AP's (each on a different ssid) to connect to so have two
wifi interfaces - unfortunately they are not equal so I want wlan0 to
connect to only one particular AP, and wlan1 to the other ... reliably! 
I can manually force it to connect but invariably at the first glitch
they both end up connected to the same AP (usually the strongest which
is often not what I want :(

BillK

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 4/4/22 01:31, William Kenworthy wrote:

Is there a way force openrc and wpa_supplicant to map a particular
access point to an interface or fail?

I have two AP's (each on a different ssid) to connect to so have two
wifi interfaces - unfortunately they are not equal so I want wlan0 to
connect to only one particular AP, and wlan1 to the other ... reliably!
I can manually force it to connect but invariably at the first glitch
they both end up connected to the same AP (usually the strongest which
is often not what I want :(

BillK

I don't know about wpa-supplicant, but I'm using open-rc and KDE, and
KDE's systemsettings Network / Connections screen lets you restrict a
network connection so a specific device.  Not sure if this helps you
any, but it would indicate that what you want is possible.

Jack

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Monday, 4 April 2022 16:12:53 BST Jack wrote:

On 4/4/22 01:31, William Kenworthy wrote:

Is there a way force openrc and wpa_supplicant to map a particular
access point to an interface or fail?

I have two AP's (each on a different ssid) to connect to so have two
wifi interfaces - unfortunately they are not equal so I want wlan0 to connect to only one particular AP, and wlan1 to the other ... reliably!
I can manually force it to connect but invariably at the first glitch
they both end up connected to the same AP (usually the strongest which
is often not what I want :(

BillK

I don't know about wpa-supplicant, but I'm using open-rc and KDE, and
KDE's systemsettings Network / Connections screen lets you restrict a
network connection so a specific device. Not sure if this helps you
any, but it would indicate that what you want is possible.

Jack

Look at the example provided in:

/usr/share/doc/netifrc-0.7.3/net.example.bz2

You can set a different ssid for each wireless NIC. The wpa_supplicant can be set with credentials for the two APs only.
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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 5/4/22 07:09, Michael wrote:

On Monday, 4 April 2022 16:12:53 BST Jack wrote:

On 4/4/22 01:31, William Kenworthy wrote:

Is there a way force openrc and wpa_supplicant to map a particular
access point to an interface or fail?

I have two AP's (each on a different ssid) to connect to so have two
wifi interfaces - unfortunately they are not equal so I want wlan0 to
connect to only one particular AP, and wlan1 to the other ... reliably!
I can manually force it to connect but invariably at the first glitch
they both end up connected to the same AP (usually the strongest which
is often not what I want :(

BillK

I don't know about wpa-supplicant, but I'm using open-rc and KDE, and
KDE's systemsettings Network / Connections screen lets you restrict a
network connection so a specific device. Not sure if this helps you
any, but it would indicate that what you want is possible.

Jack

Look at the example provided in:

/usr/share/doc/netifrc-0.7.3/net.example.bz2

You can set a different ssid for each wireless NIC. The wpa_supplicant can be
set with credentials for the two APs only.

Unfortunately, this does not work as I want ...wpa_supplicant's
behaviour makes sense in that it provides a fallback if the allocated
access point cant connect ... it will pick the next available one
(seemingly based on signal strength) if it is in its conf file (and does
not care that its another ssid) - so it does not fail.  As only one of
the two networks has internet access the device often ends up not being
able to be connected to (its headless so that's a problem!).

I have fallen back to openrc for the main connection and will do the
other manually - it would be nice to have everything properly controlled
but its not working for me.

BillK

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On 4/4/22 23:12, Jack wrote:

On 4/4/22 01:31, William Kenworthy wrote:

Is there a way force openrc and wpa_supplicant to map a particular
access point to an interface or fail?

I have two AP's (each on a different ssid) to connect to so have two
wifi interfaces - unfortunately they are not equal so I want wlan0 to
connect to only one particular AP, and wlan1 to the other ... reliably!
I can manually force it to connect but invariably at the first glitch
they both end up connected to the same AP (usually the strongest which
is often not what I want :(

BillK

I don't know about wpa-supplicant, but I'm using open-rc and KDE, and
KDE's systemsettings Network / Connections screen lets you restrict a
network connection so a specific device.  Not sure if this helps you
any, but it would indicate that what you want is possible.

Jack

Hi Jack, unfortunately its a headless, wifi only system which is why
getting openrc to behave is important!

BillK

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Tuesday, 5 April 2022 08:46:52 BST Neil Bothwick wrote:

On Tue, 5 Apr 2022 11:16:10 +0800, William Kenworthy wrote:

On 5/4/22 07:09, Michael wrote:

On Monday, 4 April 2022 16:12:53 BST Jack wrote:

On 4/4/22 01:31, William Kenworthy wrote:

Is there a way force openrc and wpa_supplicant to map a particular
access point to an interface or fail?

I have two AP's (each on a different ssid) to connect to so have two >>> wifi interfaces - unfortunately they are not equal so I want wlan0
to connect to only one particular AP, and wlan1 to the other ...
reliably! I can manually force it to connect but invariably at the
first glitch they both end up connected to the same AP (usually the
strongest which is often not what I want :(

BillK

I don't know about wpa-supplicant, but I'm using open-rc and KDE, and
KDE's systemsettings Network / Connections screen lets you restrict a
network connection so a specific device. Not sure if this helps you
any, but it would indicate that what you want is possible.

Jack

Look at the example provided in:

/usr/share/doc/netifrc-0.7.3/net.example.bz2

You can set a different ssid for each wireless NIC. The
wpa_supplicant can be set with credentials for the two APs only.

Unfortunately, this does not work as I want ...wpa_supplicant's
behaviour makes sense in that it provides a fallback if the allocated access point cant connect ... it will pick the next available one (seemingly based on signal strength) if it is in its conf file (and
does not care that its another ssid) - so it does not fail. As only
one of the two networks has internet access the device often ends up
not being able to be connected to (its headless so that's a problem!).

I have fallen back to openrc for the main connection and will do the
other manually - it would be nice to have everything properly
controlled but its not working for me.

Could you run two instances of wpa_suplicant, each listening on a
different interface and using a config with only the AP for that
interface?

As I recall wpa_cli can be launched by specifying a particular interface. Therefore two instances of wpa_cli launched by a script should be possible.

However, isn't the purpose of /etc/conf.d/net to specify how individual interfaces are configured? I still think - but have not tried it - each wireless NIC can be configured via this file to use a particular access point/ channel and not go scanning for others, while the wpa_supplicant can be left
to deal with the authentication mechanism after each NIC has found its specified ESSID.

The section in the netifrc example file which starts as follows, merits reading:

###############################################
# SETTINGS
# Hard code an SSID to an interface - leave this unset if you wish the driver
# to scan for available Access Points . . .

Something like this ought to work:

essid_wlan0="foo"

essid_wlan1="bar"

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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)

On Tue, 5 Apr 2022 11:16:10 +0800, William Kenworthy wrote:

On 5/4/22 07:09, Michael wrote:

On Monday, 4 April 2022 16:12:53 BST Jack wrote:

On 4/4/22 01:31, William Kenworthy wrote:

Is there a way force openrc and wpa_supplicant to map a particular
access point to an interface or fail?

I have two AP's (each on a different ssid) to connect to so have two
wifi interfaces - unfortunately they are not equal so I want wlan0
to connect to only one particular AP, and wlan1 to the other ...
reliably! I can manually force it to connect but invariably at the
first glitch they both end up connected to the same AP (usually the
strongest which is often not what I want :(

BillK

I don't know about wpa-supplicant, but I'm using open-rc and KDE, and
KDE's systemsettings Network / Connections screen lets you restrict a
network connection so a specific device. Not sure if this helps you
any, but it would indicate that what you want is possible.

Jack

Look at the example provided in:

/usr/share/doc/netifrc-0.7.3/net.example.bz2

You can set a different ssid for each wireless NIC. The
wpa_supplicant can be set with credentials for the two APs only.

Unfortunately, this does not work as I want ...wpa_supplicant's
behaviour makes sense in that it provides a fallback if the allocated
access point cant connect ... it will pick the next available one
(seemingly based on signal strength) if it is in its conf file (and
does not care that its another ssid) - so it does not fail.  As only
one of the two networks has internet access the device often ends up
not being able to be connected to (its headless so that's a problem!).

I have fallen back to openrc for the main connection and will do the
other manually - it would be nice to have everything properly
controlled but its not working for me.

Could you run two instances of wpa_suplicant, each listening on a
different interface and using a config with only the AP for that
interface?


--
Neil Bothwick

Help a man when he is in trouble and he will remember you when he is in
trouble again

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--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (2

On 5/4/22 16:05, Michael wrote:

On Tuesday, 5 April 2022 08:46:52 BST Neil Bothwick wrote:

On Tue, 5 Apr 2022 11:16:10 +0800, William Kenworthy wrote:

On 5/4/22 07:09, Michael wrote:

On Monday, 4 April 2022 16:12:53 BST Jack wrote:

On 4/4/22 01:31, William Kenworthy wrote:

Is there a way force openrc and wpa_supplicant to map a particular >>>>>> access point to an interface or fail?

I have two AP's (each on a different ssid) to connect to so have two >>>>>> wifi interfaces - unfortunately they are not equal so I want wlan0 >>>>>> to connect to only one particular AP, and wlan1 to the other ...
reliably! I can manually force it to connect but invariably at the >>>>>> first glitch they both end up connected to the same AP (usually the >>>>>> strongest which is often not what I want :(

BillK

I don't know about wpa-supplicant, but I'm using open-rc and KDE, and >>>>> KDE's systemsettings Network / Connections screen lets you restrict a >>>>> network connection so a specific device. Not sure if this helps you >>>>> any, but it would indicate that what you want is possible.

Jack

Look at the example provided in:

/usr/share/doc/netifrc-0.7.3/net.example.bz2

You can set a different ssid for each wireless NIC. The
wpa_supplicant can be set with credentials for the two APs only.

Unfortunately, this does not work as I want ...wpa_supplicant's
behaviour makes sense in that it provides a fallback if the allocated
access point cant connect ... it will pick the next available one
(seemingly based on signal strength) if it is in its conf file (and
does not care that its another ssid) - so it does not fail. As only
one of the two networks has internet access the device often ends up
not being able to be connected to (its headless so that's a problem!).

I have fallen back to openrc for the main connection and will do the
other manually - it would be nice to have everything properly
controlled but its not working for me.

Could you run two instances of wpa_suplicant, each listening on a
different interface and using a config with only the AP for that
interface?

As I recall wpa_cli can be launched by specifying a particular interface. Therefore two instances of wpa_cli launched by a script should be possible.

However, isn't the purpose of /etc/conf.d/net to specify how individual interfaces are configured? I still think - but have not tried it - each wireless NIC can be configured via this file to use a particular access point/
channel and not go scanning for others, while the wpa_supplicant can be left to deal with the authentication mechanism after each NIC has found its specified ESSID.

The section in the netifrc example file which starts as follows, merits reading:

###############################################
# SETTINGS
# Hard code an SSID to an interface - leave this unset if you wish the driver # to scan for available Access Points . . .

Something like this ought to work:

essid_wlan0="foo"

essid_wlan1="bar"

Didnt work - what did work was setting up the main network using normal
openrc and scripting the other interface after making it
config_wlan1="null" in conf.d/net.  I am putting this part of the
problem as solved.  Routing is still an issue but once I have a couple
of diagnostic packages installed (compiling is slow on a pi!) I will be
better able to see whats gone wrong.

BillK

--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)