Man page - interfaces-wifi(5)

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interfaces-wifi(5) File Formats Manual interfaces-wifi(5)

interfaces-wifi - WiFi vocabulary for the interfaces(5) file format

Wi-Fi (the IEEE 802.11 family of protocols) is a commonly used wireless networking standard. The following options allow for configuration of Wi-Fi client interfaces.

WPA-secured networks are managed using wpa_supplicant(8), while insecure networks are managed directly with iwconfig(8).

wifi-config-path path

Denotes the absolute path to a wpa_supplicant configuration file. If no path is given, /run/wpa_supplicant.<interface>.conf will be used for a temporary configuration file. This option may not be used with other configuration options.

wifi-ssid ssid

The SSID the Wi-Fi client should connect to.

wifi-psk psk

The passphrase for connecting to the Wi-Fi network. If unset, the client will connect without WPA2 encryption.

A typical setup may involve connecting to a home and work network. To achieve this, we can define a pair of virtual interfaces called wifi-home and wifi-work, which connect to their respective wifi networks:

iface wifi-home
	use dhcp
	wifi-ssid HomeNetwork
	wifi-psk ExamplePassphrase
iface wifi-work
	use dhcp
	wifi-config-path /etc/network/wpa-work.conf

The virtual interfaces can be used with ifup and ifdown:

# ifup wlan0=wifi-home
# ifdown wlan0
# ifup wlan0=wifi-work

iwconfig(8)
wpa_supplicant(8)

Ariadne Conill <ariadne@dereferenced.org>

2025-03-25