Orange Problems, EE Problems, T-Mobile Problems - View topic - HOWTO: Connect wirelessly to the Livebox in Linux - Orange Broadband, Orange Email, Orange Mobile Phones, EE Broadband, EE Mobile, EE Problems, www.eeproblems.co.uk

Orange Problems, EE Problems, T-Mobile Problems - View topic - HOWTO: Connect wirelessly to the Livebox in Linux - Orange Broadband, Orange Email, Orange Mobile Phones, EE Broadband, EE Mobile, EE Problems, www.eeproblems.co.uk - OrangeProblems.co.uk

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< Livebox Issues? ~ HOWTO: Connect wirelessly to the Livebox in Linux

alleluia20

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 10:16 pm

Joined: 01 Jul 2007 Posts: 6

Here it is! What you all were waiting for!!!!!

Of course, even the mole of Orange who monitors this site was waiting for it. Mole, please, can you tell your company to offer me the broadband for free for the rest of my life?, as now workers in the call centre won't need to hide under the table every time they hear the word "Linux". Razz

Moderator, please, will you make this post sticky!!!!!

Disclaimer: I think that all I am going to write is correct at the date I am writing it, but trust it or not at your own risk.

First of all, switch the Livebox to WPA mode only, for two reasons: it is more secure, and the computer will not confuse.

But, still, on the Livebox configuration you have to enter a WEP key, and 26 character long. What was the not-so-competent designer of the Livebox meaning?

We need a bit of technical things. Impatient readers can skip it. Big thanks to Bryan Kadzban, without him I would not have been able to connect, and this post would have been impossible.:

WPA keys' hexadecimal values are not 26 characters long. However, WEP-104 keys are (WEP-104 is also sometimes called WEP-128 by vendors that try to make it seem better than it really is. It only uses 104 bits' worth of key material. 104 bits is 13 bytes, which is 26 hex characters).

On the other hand, WPA-PSK keys are 32 bytes (256 bits) long, which is 64 characters. There's also a hash function that will combine an ASCII string (<=63 characters' worth) with the SSID (the "name" of the wifi you see from your computer) to generate a 256-bit key.

So, what's on here? As the key in the router is less than 64 characters long, the "WEP key" entered in the router is no longer a hexadecimal key. The "WEP key" is now actually an ASCII passphrase, and gets hashed ("combined") with the SSID to generate the real key, There is no way to treat a 26-character string as a hex WPA key; WPA keys are 256 bits long.

Mole, are you still reading? Please tell those sloppy people to upgrade the software of the Livebox so every people can understand it Razz

Rest of the readers, please wake up Smile

Now we are going to the howto itself:

I assume that you have the wifi card well configured in Linux. Try connecting to a non-encrypted wifi and, in case you can't, please solve the problem before doing anything else.

You must have wpasupplicant (to handle the encryption) and dhclient (to obtain the network configuration by DHCP) installed. With Debian type as root

apt-get install wpasupplicant dhcp3-client

With Ubuntu, I suppose it is the same but typing sudo at the beginning. With other distros, help yourself Smile

Of course, you must have a wired connection to do that Smile

Anyway, probably you do not need to install those packages because they are actually already installed.

All the commands that follow must be executed as root (in Ubuntu, with sudo).

Just in case you have other wpasupplicant processes running, stop them:

killall wpa_supplicant

Now we have to run wpa_supplicant to handle the encrytion. We have to create the configuration file (only once)

kwrite /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf (gedit instead of kwrite for gnome users) and we write

network={
ssid="Livebox-***"
psk="what you have in the Livebox in the field WEP key"
}

of course, do not write Livebox-*** Smile

, write your real essid. The quotation after psk means that it is not the real key, but a passphrase that will be hashed with the ssid to produce the key.

OK, we save and close the file.

Now, as you are going to connect new hardware, press the button "1" of the Livebox (I did not realise about this f***ing step and I was desperated Smile

).

We start negotiating the WPA with the following command:

wpa_supplicant -dd -D wext -i ath0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

of course, replace ath0 by the name of your interface (you can see them all executing ifconfig as root: eth0 is usually the wired, and lo does not apply at all).

Finally, we obtain the network configuration with dhcp:

dhclient ath0

(replace ath0 by your interface).

if you see at the end of the output something like "bound to 192.168.1.20", you are right (the IP does not have to be the same).

Are you too lazy to type two commands every time you start the computer? OK. We can create a script. Go to your home directory and create a document startwifi.sh with this content:

#!/bin/sh

# Execute this script as root

# Stop all the wpa_supplicant processes
killall wpa_supplicant

# Do not forget to press the 1 button of the Livebox the first time!!!

# Start the WPA and run it in background
wpa_supplicant -dd -D wext -i ath0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf &

# Start the DHCP
dhclient ath0

save it and made it executable typing:

chmod u+x startwifi.sh

now go to a console, switch to root and type ./startwifi.sh

You can configure gnome and KDE to execute the script automatically every time you login, but investigate yourself. I am not going to explain everything, am I? Razz

If you have any questions, feel free to write me or leave a reply.

Regards,

David

OrangeProblems

Posted: Fri Jul 27, 2007 10:16 pm

Full information on how to change your broadband provider here. OrangeProblems.co.uk

Elhana

Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 12:33 pm

Joined: 11 Apr 2006 Posts: 3394

All well and good but do you really expect tech support to know and understand all that for the extremely small minority of users with linux. The time and energy needed to support linux currently far outweighs any benefit they'd receive.

In all my time I have had one customer ask me about linux and that was just a query rather than any sort of technical question. It took them a long time to do MAC support for the livebox and there's literally no demand for linux support. Generally I'd expect any linux user wanting internet access to be very selective over which ISP they choose, proprietry software (eg AOL) and hardware (eg Livebox) would often be straight out the door most of the time.

_________________

alleluia20

Posted: Sat Jul 28, 2007 6:33 pm

Joined: 01 Jul 2007 Posts: 6

I am not an expert on marketing, but the broadband market is very competitive, and France Telecom intends (I think) to be in the first positions.

Now, add to the statement above a second statement: the number of Linux users is dramatically increasing, to some extend because of Canonical's marketing (Canonical is the maker of Ubuntu) and, of course, because of Microsoft as well Smile

. (Windows Vista is bloated even in the latest hardwares. I mean, all Windows are bloated, but Vista much more than the former ones, although it seems impossible to reach Very Happy

)

Do you want a proof that the number of Linux users is dramatically increasing?: Ballmer is implicitly threatening Linux users and makers with suing them over patent violations (but he does not unveil the patents, I think because he knows that that is not true).

Again, I am not an expert in marketing, but I presume that the first Internet company which keeps an eye on Linux might be the first one to pull it off.

One can argue that Linux users do not need support Very Happy

, and we could debate about it. But it is undebatable that Linux users do need not to be misled, which things like "you are in WPA mode but please enter a WEP key", "it is a hexadecimal WPA key", "hexadecimal WPA keys can be shorter than 64 characters", etc.

Elhana

Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2007 2:55 am

Joined: 11 Apr 2006 Posts: 3394

Even if it's increasing linux is still in the minority and will be for quite some time.

It's getting closer all the time but it's simply not fully ready for desktop use for the general public IMO. Windows may be bloated but at least installing a wireless adapter is a very simple affair and connecting equally so as you just select your access point and enter the key as needed, none of these commands having to be entered and scripts making just to get it to connect automatically.

Linux will need to take care of these and many other sorts of problems before they really start making major headway into the desktop market.

_________________

OrangeProblems

Posted: Sun Jul 29, 2007 2:55 am

Full information on how to change your broadband provider here. OrangeProblems.co.uk

springnuts

Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2007 11:02 pm

Joined: 16 Nov 2007 Posts: 1

This was outstandingly helpful, many many thanks. I am a complete Linux newbie, having become so frustrated with Vista <spit> and Office 2007 <double-spit> - but could not get my laptop to connect wirelessly to Orange. .

Not sure how I can make the script run automatically, but that is for another day!

Again - Thank you.

Regards

Springnuts

fredtechno

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 10:03 pm

Joined: 13 Apr 2010 Posts: 2

I use Ubuntu 9.10, and connecting wireless was easy - a simple right click on edit connections, click on the wireless tab and entered the passkey from the side of the box.

It took around 15 seconds - once i remembered to press the 'pair' button on the livebox.

The only complaint I have is with the aggressive customer support staff i encountered who could only say 'we dont support linux' - this needs to change, and quick. From my own observations about the operating systems that my friends and family are using (which is how i came to use ubuntu) there are hardly any windows users around!

If someone could post the command to refresh the IP stack on the livebox for when it throws a fit, then i'll have no more need to contact customer support!

Cheers,
Fred

Borednow

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 10:37 pm

Joined: 13 Aug 2007 Posts: 2049

fredtechno wrote:

From my own observations about the operating systems that my friends and family are using (which is how i came to use ubuntu) there are hardly any windows users around

No......of course there's not Rolling Eyes

fredtechno

Posted: Tue Apr 13, 2010 11:02 pm

Joined: 13 Apr 2010 Posts: 2

Ok...

For those that find their Livebox only receiving but not transmitting (on ethernet), here is the fix:

unplug all other pc's, except the one your fixing it with.
TRY to connect to 192.168.1.1 to connect to the livebox admin page.

If you cannot connect to the admin page, and resetting the livebox has no effect then open terminal and enter:

sudo dhclient -r

enter your linux user password press enter, and your back in business.
If the first attempt fails, re-enter and try again, the most i had to try was 3 attempts, and hence this post.

fallenstar

Posted: Wed Nov 17, 2010 6:01 pm

Joined: 17 Nov 2010 Posts: 1

I gave up and got an old netgear rangemax cable (modemless) router and shoved it on the front of the livebox. cost about �22 and worth it's weight in wifi gold. now i get my wifi from the netgear. Rolling Eyes

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