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wicd is an environment-independent network manager interface. It lets you have a nice way of connecting to wireless networks without needing to pull in Gnome or other desktop environment dependencies.

Connecting to the campus wireless with it is relatively straight-forward.

First, locate the network you want to connect to. If you're connecting to CometNet2 or UTDALLAS, you need to expand the menu and click “Advanced Options” in order to enable encryption.

For CometNet2 choose the “PEAP with GTC” entry and fill out the appropriate fields.

If you do not have this entry, it needs to be added. wicd uses a set of template wpa_supplicant files to handle configuration.

A sample “PEAP with GTC” template follows:

name = PEAP with GTC
author = Adam Blackburn
version = 2
require identity *Identity password *Password
-----
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
network={
	ssid="$_ESSID"
	proto=RSN
	key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
	pairwise=CCMP
	eap=PEAP
	identity="$_IDENTITY"
	password="$_PASSWORD"
}

Note: no changes should be made to this file. You do not need to replace the identity or password fields; this is a template and is used to tell wicd what fields to prompt for.

If you want to connect to UTDALLAS, you will most likely have to create your own template as it uses a somewhat unusual authentication system.

A sample template for “PEAP with MSCHAPv2” follows:

name = PEAP with MSCHAPv2
author = Eli L.
version = 1
require identity *Identity password *Password ca_cert *Path_to_CA_Cert 
-----
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
network={
    ssid="$_ESSID"
    scan_ssid=$_SCAN
    key_mgmt=IEEE8021X
    eap=PEAP
    phase2="auth-MSCHAPV2"
    identity="$_IDENTITY"
    password="$_PASSWORD"
    ca_cert="$_CA_CERT"
}

To add a template, place it in the /etc/wicd/encryption/templates directory. Name it something informative, like “peap-mschapv2”, and chmod it to 644 (Root: rw, Group/Other: r). You now need to edit the /etc/wic/encryption/templates/active file to tell wicd to include that template. Add the filename on a newline and restart wicd to include the new template.