Okay, just got my new OLPC yesterday and I have been playing around with it. Definitely an entirely new paradigm and one that will take some getting used to. I’ll be posting more of my thoughts in a review a bit later, however, I wanted to talk about how to get around an immediate problem that I had getting my OLPC to talk to my Wireless Network.
I use WPA2-PSK which is generally the strongest wireless security option available today to the home user. An even stronger version makes use of RADIUS and a back end user authentication service like Windows Active Directory, but most home users simply find running something that sophisticated to be more trouble than it is worth.
My WPA key is an evil 63 character alpha numeric that includes symbols as well. You can generate some pretty strong ones using Steve Gibson’s Password Generator. For some reason, there is a bug in the OLPC code that makes it refuse to accept the ASCII string. You need to covert it to Hexadecimal for it to work. WPA clients generally take the ASCII WPA key you enter, combine it with the SSID of your wireless network and hash it to create a 64 character Hexadecimal value. The client on the shipping version of the OLPC has a known bug that prevents this from working correctly.
Generating the hash manually is a pain, but fortunately, some kind soul has created a web page that will do it for you. Navigate your web browser here and you will get a page that will let you enter your SSID and WPA ASCII key. It will then return the 64 character Hexadecimal value which you simply cut and paste into the Password field on your OLPC and you are good to go. As I said, this works with the WPA2/AES system I am running.
Have fun with it.
I tried everything from your message to other things in the forum. I have a WEP encryption code that is a hex value – it will not accept it. I converted the SSID and WEP to the 64 hex and the OLPC computer will not even allow me to choose anything other than the passphrase 128 bit option – otherwise the OK box is greyed out. The mesh browser shows every url as invalid. I am truly frustrated. Any advise? Thanks.
Jim:
Any ideas on how to get my WEP router to work. Since I rec’d the XO I have absolutely no browser capabilities. I get an error from the mesh server even trying to recognize the http://www.google url. Do you know how to reverse the Wpa DOS script (listed on the forum for WPA’s)I tried out of desperation. I have internet service provided through AT&T which provides a Hep encyption passphrase. I have used the HEP drop down – and “Open”. According to my laptop it is “open”.
I am going to post a question on the Forum also but if you can help, I’d appreciate it. I thought I’d have the computer working before the holiday’s but am getting a tad frustrated.
Thanks.
Wow Thank you so much for this info! It would have been bad to have not been able to use my new XO in my own home! Now I just have to do some digging to find out how to find my XO’s MAC address so I can turn my router’s MAC filter back on!
Make sure you have AES set on your router. I had mine set to TKIP and could not connect. Switched the router to AES and it connected fine.
The /usr/sbin/wpa_passphrase command will also turn the alphanumeric version of the password into hex format. The Wpa.sh script (http://wiki.laptop.org/go/WPA_Manual_Setting) grabs this and puts it into the /home/olpc/.sugar/default/nm/networks.cfg file.
Hope this helps. –PSRC
Hi, did you use EAP-TLS in the OLPC Laptop?????
Is it possible???
THX gimena
Thanks, that trick worked for me!