Connecting to Eduroam Network

Just one simple Step

Assuming that you are using netctl, eduroam networks can be easily accessed by placing the following profile in /etc/netctl/.

Connection='wireless'
Interface='<wlan interface>'
Security='wpa-configsection'
Description='eduroam network'
IP='dhcp'
TimeoutWPA=30
WPAConfigSection=(
  'ssid="eduroam"'
  'key_mgmt=WPA-EAP'
  'eap=PEAP'
  'proto=RSN'
  'phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"'
  'anonymous_identity="<anonymous mail address>"'
  'identity="<identity mail address>"'
  'ca_cert="<path to *.pem>"'
  'password=hash:<password hash>'
)

The profile can then be used by calling

$ netctl start eduroam

Obtaining the Password Hash

The hash used to specify the password can be generated using the MD4 algorithm:

$ echo -n '<password>' | iconv -t utf16le | openssl md4

If you don’t like typing your password into the shell, you might also use

$ read -sp"Password: " passwd

and pass $passwd to the echo function. Note that the -s parameter is not POSIX-compliant and depends on bash.