quick client setup walkthrough

created onNovember 18, 2025

This walkthrough is for a quick client machine network setup by hand. The examples are for a fictive client machine with the following client and network values:

IP 192.168.0.10
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.168.0.255
gateway 192.168.0.10

Newer versions of udev no longer use the traditional Linux naming scheme for interfaces with eth0, wlan0, etc. To use the traditional naming scheme, add to the kernel cmdline.

setting up the network device with ip

ip addr add 192.168.0.10/255.255.255.0 wlan0 ip link set wlan0 up ip route add default via 192.168.0.10

alternative: setting up the network device with ifconfig

ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.10 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.0.255 up route add default gw 192.168.0.1

generate config block for SSID with wpa_passphrase

wpa_passphrase "<SSID>" "<password>" > wpa_supplicant.conf

setting up access to WLAN access point

wpa_supplicant -B -i wlan0 -c wpa_supplicant.conf

Usually wpa_supplicant uses the correct driver for the WLAN interface. To run wpa_supplicant with a specific driver, run

wpa_supplicant -B -D wext -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
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