Re: Patch for connecting wpa_passphrase to the build

Hi Sam,

On Tue, Oct 17, 2006 at 09:04:07AM -0700, Sam Leffler wrote:
> > Yesterday I sent a small patch for connecting the wpa_passphrase
> > utility from src/contrib/wpa_supplicant to the build. The patch, along
> > with a minimalistic man page, can be found attached to bin/104457.
> > 
> > I would appreciate if somebody would test it and verify that it works.
> 
> Why do you need it?

I often use it when assigning new WPA keys to new users on my FreeBSD
(and hostapd) based access points.

Instead of having to generate all the 256-bit pre-shared WPA keys from
ASCII passphrases at runtime (cpu intensive operation when you have
many keys configured), I just call wpa_passphrase with the given SSID,
enter the ASCII passphrase and it gives me a static 256-bit key in
return.

This furthermore allows me to give both the ASCII passphrase and the
256-bit pre-shared WPA key to any given user along with proper
instructions.

The last part is especially helpful since quite a few vendor specific
WPA configuration utilities for that "other" operating system accepts
either an ASCII passphrase _or_ a WPA pre-shared key, meaning I would
have to guess which vendor specific piece of software a given user
has, and hand him/her either an ASCII passphrase or a WPA pre-shared
key based on my guess.

Cheers,
Brix
-- 
Henrik Brix Andersen <[email protected]>

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