UniWireless and ArchLinux

No, this is not a memory-management related post. With that said, I decided to actually spend some time and try to get my Linux box running on the the University of Melbourne's wireless network, as they do not have much help regarding low-level settings, at least I didn't seem to find too much help on the aforementioned site. The links at the end of this post are what got me rocking. Personally, I run ArchLinux with netctl (as a replacement for netcfg). The syntax that both of the aforementioned network configuration utilities use is similar. Simply, here is my config, I have a feeling this is going to be similar for many other institutions. Please note that I have not spent any time to tweak or remove any redundant options below.

Interface=wlan0
Connection=wireless
Security=wpa-configsection
IP=dhcp
ESSID=UniWireless
WPAConfigSection=(
    'scan_ssid=1'
    'ssid="UniWireless"'
    'key_mgmt=WPA-EAP'
    'eap=PEAP'
    'identity="MrSexxy"'
    'password="ILikeGoats"'
)

And that's it. Of course, you will need to use your proper uni username and password (the same one you use when logging into the library's online database). Please make sure the permissions on this file are proper so that any-old user cannot read your password.

The uni's website mentions that students can use either a manual or automatic proxy. I choose the manual, which will also request your username/password again. With that said chromium supports both th automatic (pac) proxy configuration and the old-school manual configuration (as follows):

chromium --proxy-server=wwwproxy.student.unimelb.edu.au:8000

... Now fire them torrents up (oh, yeah, I'm pretty sure you are being watched).
Special thanks to these very insightful/helpful posts.

• https://github.com/joukewitteveen/netctl/blob/master/docs/examples/wireless-wpa-configsection
• https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=150701

-Matt