Re: Resetting PSK for WPA

[Robert Smits <bob rsmits ca>]

On Thursday 27 September 2007 17:25, Patton Echols wrote:
> There's a question here, but let me tell why first . . .
>
> After hearing the vulnerability of WPA to attacks on short pre-shared
> keys, I decided to reset my wireless routers to more robust keys.
>
> Resetting Network Manager to use a different key was more of a
> challenge. (I had thought that, upon finding that it's psk was wrong, it
> would ask for a new one)  But it didn't.  NM just kept trying to connect.
>
> After some judicious googling, I found two instructions:
>
> The first (I think on Darren  Alber's faq?  but now I can't find the
> page)  was to reset the SSID with the following command:
>
> gconftool-2 --recursive-unset
> /system/networking/wireless/networks/<ssid> with <ssid> replaced with
> the correct one. (for what it's worth the correct directory on my ubuntu
> system is:
>  ~/.gconf/system/networking/wireless/networks/<ssid> and gconftools does
> not like the "." in the directory name)
>
> At any rate, once getting to the correct place, gconftool-2 did not
> return any output, and a search of the man page did not reveal an
> obvious "verbose" switch.  But since there was no error, I restarted NM
> using:
> sudo /etc/init.d/dbus restart
> No luck, NM continued trying to connect with the old key.
>
> The second instruction was more of a brute force approach.  Go to
> ~/.gconf/system/networking/wireless/networks/ and removing the directory
> named <ssid> Again replacing with the correct name.  Another dbus
> restart, no change.
>
>
> FInally, having searched for quite some time to see if the old psk was
> stored elsewhere, I re-booted the system.  That finally worked -- and
> now I'm finally getting to the question.
>
> As a linux newbie, one of the things I like is the ability to tweak,
> break, fix etc the system without having to reboot all the time.  I
> assumed that I should be able to do so with NM and with other issues a
> dbus restart is just what is needed.  Can't I do this without a reboot?
> Another way of asking: Where was my old key stored and what should I
> have restarted so that NM would be forced to ask me for the new one?

I think this depends very much on what distro you use, and I don't see where 
you've told us that.

In opensuse this is literally a 30 second job. Just open Yast, go to network 
card, edit the configuration for the wireless card and cut and paste your wpa 
password. Click finish and you're done.

I realize if you're using something else this may not be helpful. I would 
look, though for where you configure your network card, and not Network 
Manager.

Bob

-- 
Bob Smits bob rsmits ca