Wi-Fi: Difference between revisions

Latest revision as of 18:17, 10 January 2026

Alpine Linux has two wireless daemons i.e wpa_supplicant and iwd and both are fully supported. This page describes how to set up a wireless network connection using the default daemon i.e wpa_supplicant.

Note: Do not use both wireless daemons i.e wpa_supplicant and iwd simultaneously, as it leads to conflicts.

Prerequisites

Working wireless device driver. Use the commands ip link or ip a to list your available network interfaces wlan0, if you don't see any, refer to Troubleshooting section.

Setup-interfaces

The setup-interfaces script automates the installation and configuration of wpa_supplicant daemon to use Wi-Fi. NetworkManager can then be used to manage your Wi-Fi using various gui/tui tools.

Manual configuration

To get started install wpa_supplicant package:

# apk add wpa_supplicant

Use this command to add your Wi-Fi network to wpa_supplicant:

# wpa_passphrase 'ExampleWifiSSID' 'ExampleWifiPassword' > /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

(Access point not broadcasting its SSID requires additional line scan_ssid=1 in the file /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf)

Note: the Wi-Fi SSID and password are case sensitive and the single quote before and after the SSID and password need to be there

Start wpa_supplicant in the foreground to check if wireless connection succeeds.

# wpa_supplicant -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Optional security precaution:

By default wpa_supplicant will store your Wi-Fi password in plain text:

Contents of /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

network={
    ssid="<YourSSIDShouldBeHere>"
        #psk="<YourPasswordShouldBeHereInPlainText>"
    psk=<RandomLettersAndNumbersShouldBeHere>
}

If you dont want your stored password in plain text just delete the line with #psk="<YourPasswordShouldBeHereInPlainText>" on it.

If all is well, run it as a daemon in the background by setting the -B option.

# wpa_supplicant -B -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

Configure the interface with an IP address.

# udhcpc -i wlan0

Sanity check: the interface should have a inet address.

$ ip addr show wlan0

Add a entry for the desired interface (e.g. wlan0) in the file as follows:

Contents of /etc/network/interfaces

auto lo
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp

Warning: Don't remove or comment out the auto lo entry

Sanity check: Make sure /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf is the correct configuration for the wireless access point you want to connect to.

Bring the interface down.

# ip link set wlan0 down

Manually restart (or start) networking.

# rc-service networking --quiet restart &

Perform sanity checks. For issues related to name resolution, refer Networking section.

Service configuration

Proceed to configure wpa_supplicant service to start automatically on boot, if networking works properly:

# rc-update add wpa_supplicant boot

Also ensure that networking is set to automatically start on boot:

# rc-update add networking boot

Manage wpa_supplicant service using the standard start, stop and restart options. For eg: to start wpa_supplicant service:

# rc-service wpa_supplicant start

Launching udhcpc through wpa_cli actions

With the above configuration, udhcpc will only run once at boot. If the Wifi isn't available then, or the network changes after booting, udhcpc needs to be notified. You can automatically notify udhcpc of network changes by using a wpa_cli action file, such as the one installed by default at /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_cli.sh.

To manually start a wpa_cli daemon with an action file, use the `-a` option:

# wpa_cli -a /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_cli.sh

To do this automatically, use the `wpa_cli` service included in wpa_supplicant-openrc:

Contents of /etc/conf.d/wpa_cli

WPACLI_OPTS="-a /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_cli.sh"

Add the service to start at boot:

# rc-update add wpa_cli boot

Device driver

Wireless networking devices require device drivers and some chipsets also require firmware, in addition to a corresponding driver. In most cases the packaged firmware should get you the required drivers. The following section provides more information for various chipsets like Broadcom and some of these out-of-tree kernel drivers use Alpine kernel module support.

Intel wireless devices

Intel wireless users seeking a minimal set of firmware packages need to ensure that the following firmware packages are installed: the linux-firmware-none meta package and linux-firmware-other. Additionally, the iwlwifi command is provided by a further package beginning from Alpine Linux v3.23 and Edge: such installations will also require linux-firmware-intel, which now supplies iwlwifi*.ucode.zst. Earlier supported versions of Alpine Linux had the iwlwifi command bundled in linux-firmware-other. v3.23.x

Broadcom Wi-Fi Chipset

The Broadcom chipset is quite popular among older computers. The b43 driver is included in the default kernel packages. However, you might need to compile the firmware manually for this chipset as it is not included in linux-firmware for some cards. To check what broadcom chip you have using lspci:

$ lspci -nn -d 14e4:

Check what driver you need on the b43 compatibility page.

B43

Download firmware cutter.

$ apk add b43-fwcutter

Now we have everything to download the proprietary driver and extract the firmware from it:

# export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR="/lib/firmware" $ wget https://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2 $ tar xjf broadcom-wl-5.100.138.tar.bz2 $ b43-fwcutter -w "$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR" broadcom-wl-5.100.138/linux/wl_apsta.o

More information can be found here.

Now you need to use modprobe so the device will show up:

# modprobe b43

Reboot and you have a working b43 driver. Now continue with the normal instructions.

wl

For wl chipset, you can download the APKBUILD from here. The site has necessary instructions and the it uses Alpine kernel module support for automatic building and updating driver for new kernel versions.

Alternately, install the software to build a driver:

apk add git alpine-sdk linux-headers linux-lts-dev

Then install the driver build repo (this is archived, however it's legacy so that doesn't matter):

git clone https://github.com/antoineco/broadcom-wl cd broadcom-wl

Then follow the build instructions listed in the git repo:

make doas make install doas depmod -A doas modprobe wl

Reboot and you have a working wl driver. Now continue with the normal instructions.

Realtek wireless devices

A number of out-of-tree kernel drivers for Realtek chipset are packaged and found here rtl*src*. These drivers can be installed using Alpine kernel module support.

Troubleshooting

In most cases the packaged firmware should get you the required drivers. To list your available network interfaces use the commands:

$ ip link

or

$ ip a

If the above command shows wlan0 interface, proceed to bring it up using the command: # ip link set wlan0 up. If no network interface is displayed, you probably need to load and/or install a device driver.

checking network cards

$ cat /proc/net/dev

lists the network interfaces that are detected. If the expected interfaces are not available, check what network hardware chip you have using builtin lsusb command. If the output lacks sufficient information, install additional packages referred in hardware management to use below commands:

$ lspci -nn

$ lsusb

Check what device driver the card uses and modprobe it. Check that the card is in master mode.

Check dmesg

Run dmesg and check for errors related to the wireless interface. Usually, dmesg gives maximum information related to network and all other hardware.

# dmesg

Rfkill

An error message ioctl 0x8914 failed: No error information, is the busybox ip's way of saying your wireless radio is rfkilled, which means the wireless card is blocked by kernel. This can be changed using rfkill. To show the current status of your Wi-Fi:

~$ rfkill list 0: phy0: wlan Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no

If the card is hard-blocked, use the hardware button or switch to unblock it. If the card is not hard-blocked but soft-blocked, use the following command:

# rfkill unblock wifi