Yesterday I made a discovery concerning the location on the wifi password key, its on the wifi card and not on the hard disk, which surprised me.
Story behind it.
A client, to whom I have supplied and supported for over 7 years told me her screen kept going off, not unusual as its been doing this for around 6 months. Usually I take the tower apart, clean the dust out of the graphics card plug it back and it works. If short of time occasionally I just plug the screen into the other hdmi port and that fixes it for a couple of weeks till I go back.
This time the amount of dust was unbeliveble so decided the answer was swap her box as it was 16 years old for a newer model also did not have a graphics card to change that.
Took her old box apart removed the hard disk and fitted it to the newer box.
Switched on and everything worked no problem except the wifi, it saw the livebox internet connection but did not know the password, had to re enter it for it to work. Of course it took me a few goes to get the password correct as the on screen of the live box showed
I have done a similar process on laptops changing just the hard disk and that already had the password entered hence I believe the password is stored on the wifi key.
It is in /etc/wpa_supplicant
It should have transferred with the disk
There must be another explanation… maybe the wpa_supplicant.conf file was specific to the old wifi card and needed to be refreshed.?
That explains it.
wpa_supplicant is one of the most hypersensitive things to set up.
I went to a lot of trouble once to devise the simplest possible wpa_supplicant.conf file that would work. It is here on the forum somewhere? I will search.
The idea is, distros get wpa-supplicant in a knot by being too complicated…you wipe what the system did and use my simplest-possible file and it will work, but with no fancy features.
Ok course, why did I not think of that. Just guessed the distinction transfered with everything working except password so thought from the wifi card side. Thanks
Wifi 2.4 working and wifi 5 not, sounds like drivers or at least a communication problem, whether it doesn’t know what to do with it because of something missing. That a user interface knows it doesn’t mean it’s really present. I wonder anyway how it works in Linux, in Windows there are several layers people know nothing about like the services started, whether something is mentioned in the register(in the right way). Anyone know of sources where Linux is explained in its workings a bit deeper?
I put in 2 exterior WiFi adaptors and they both needed the password for the live box entering. Then as those did not help, swapped the internal adaptor and it picked up the password automatic. Difference the 2 external were different makes and models the replacement interior used the same card just the adaptor was different but same make and model.