# Little Quirk of wpa_supplicant's wpa_gui

## John R. Graham

I've got a little netbook (an Acer Aspire One) on which I'm experimenting for the first time (for me) with wpa_supplicant. Networking (both wired and wireless) works: when properly configured, wpa_supplicant acquires and automatically reacquires my wireless network. When initially setting up the configured networks for wpa_supplicant, I launched the wpa_gui from a root console. I was able to scan for access points and then set up a secure connection to my access point with no issues at all.

Later, I launched wpa_gui from within KDE, not logged in as root. wpa_gui put up a polite message saying that it needed root privileges in order to access wpa_supplicant. First couple of launches, I provided the root credentials and it then worked perfectly.

Later on, in the course of further kernel tweaks, I rebooted, and now, when launching wpa_gui, I no longer get these polite messages and the wpa_gui fails to access wpa_supplicant. The exact message was, "Could not get status from wpa_supplicant". Launching from a root console still works and, although I haven't tried it yet, I'm assuming that modifying it's desktop menu entry to launch as root would work as well.

I'm in the process of looking into this but I though I'd ask if anyone else had encountered this minor flakiness. Thanks in advance for the help. For the record, I have net-wireless/wpa_supplicant-0.7.3-r2 installed.

- John

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## Hendrikus

The time I worked with only wpa_supplicant, I could also only start the wpa_gui as root on console. When I started it as user I could start the wpa_gui but I got the same error messages and could not change its configuration (even not when I changed the permission in wpa_supplicant.conf ctrl_interface_group)

It got more worse later after some updates, specially to baselayout2, that wpa did not work at all anymore. The wpa_gui tried to reconnect every time and didn't come further (a kind of hang up).

I got so tired of the wpa and tried a mountain of solutions that did not solve the problem, that I switched over to wpa with wicd and just followed the guide from the handbook. It works now out of the box.

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## John R. Graham

Hmm. I'm using baselayout2 and I'm having no issues at all with wpa_supplicant itself: networking is rock solid, roaming happens automatically and works well. The only issue I have is this minor issue with login credentials.

- John

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## Hendrikus

I tried somethings out on my other Gentoo installation (I have an extra one, for tweaking and trying things out...)

When I change the wpa_supplicant.conf with this edit: 

```
ctrl_interface_group=wheel
```

 then I can edit and (re)connect as user with the wpa_gui, so then it works.

When I change it to: 

```
ctrl_interface_group=0
```

 then I get also "Could not get status from wpa_supplicant"

Maybe this helps? (user must be in group wheel)

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## richardash1981

For anyone else hunting a solution to this, I've just found that I need the following lines in /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf in order to make wpa_gui work (running as a user in the plugdev group, change to suit your needs)

```

# needed for wpa_gui to work

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=plugdev

# needed to allow wpa_gui to alter the configuration

update_config=1

```

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