Connect Linux to WLAN with 10 numeric digit ascii key

[fixles]

Hi,

I've frustratingly spent the last 2 hours trying to connect my laptop running ubuntu 10.4 to my WEP wlan (I know its not secure but I cant afford a replacement). Seems the problem maybe with the ascii key lenght. Its 10 numeric digits similar to this 1234567891

All my devices android phone, PS3 and windows desktop connect fine but linux wont have it.

iwconfig wlan0 essid wireless key s:1234567891 gives an error
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.

which i think means its not happy with the key length even though its correct.

wicd manager gets stuck trying to obtain am ip address.

I've tried installing network-manager but the applet says wirless device network not managed?

I'm not changing the key to 5 or 13 characters and reconfiguring all my other devices so how do I connect linux to this network??

Thanks in advance for any help.

Back to Windows 7 for me

[Rubberman]

That is the passphrase. The key is a 48 character hexadecimal key because your Linux system doesn't know about passphrases for WEP - only WPA. You need to access the web page of the router/access point from another system and see what the actual key value is, and use that.

[fixles]

I logged onto the routers web page but there is no 48 character key? I converted the passphrase to hex but that didnt work. I cant believe linux is struggling with this even my PS3 can do this!

[Kloschüssel]

I can't recall "iwconfig key" would support passphrases, does it? Please check your manual pages in the section parameters, what is written at paragraph "key/enc[ryption]":

$ man iwconfig

But hey, why not calculate the hex representation for your passphrase? It should be possible, since it is just plain hashing: http://www.wepkey.com/

[fixles]

Hi,

iwconfig does support passphrase with sassphrase but only 5 or 13 characters. I tried creating a hex value but the hex value is the wrong length because the ascii is the wrong length.

Searching I found loads of other people with the same problem and no solution. Someone needs to update iwconfig or something this is ridiculous linux has worse wirless support than my PS3 and android phone!

[fixles]

thats s: passphrase not a smiley face

[Kloschüssel]

Did you read my entire post? If not, please re-read it - especially the last part. If you're unhappy with iwconfig, you should know that there are user interfaces for it. A popular example would be "wicd" or "network-manager" (I think the latter is shipped by default with ubuntu since lucid).

[fixles]

Did you read my entire post? If not, please re-read it - especially the last part.

I did read it. What have I missed?

[Kloschüssel]

You may have missed the link:

But hey, why not calculate the hex representation for your passphrase? It should be possible, since it is just plain hashing: WEPKEY.COM - Wireless Encryption Protocol WEP Key Generator - Lost WEP Key Convertor

A detailed verification is left to the reader since I obsoleted WEP a long time ago and migrated to WPA2. There might be other calculators, your favorite search engine will help you for sure.

Cheers