RWTH-Aachen’s eduroam on Fedora 10

The story began when I came to Aachen from Trento and needed the internet connection around the campus. I tried to use the “eduroam” SSID, but since it didn’t work, I used the “mops” instead. To get the connection, I needed to use the Cisco VPN client. So it all went well, I could connect to the internet at the university. But then, last month, when I discussed my thesis thingy with my supervisor, I couldn’t get my laptop online. I tried the normal procedure for connecting to the VPN server but with no positive result as shown below.

Connected to the “mops” SSID

Couldn’t connect to the VPN server (previously it worked fine this way)

Getting a bit frustrated, I contacted the RZ helpdesk through email, and the operator said “mops” was not available anymore! (except for guest users) Goshhh…. So the only choice was to use the “eduroam” SSID. I tried following the instructions at RZ’s website with no luck (I tried installing all 3 certificates required). I went to the RZ helpdesk at the SuperC building, but they couldn’t support the Linux platform So I went to the center for computing and communication’s helpdesk, but they couldn’t support the Linux platform as well. So they routed me to the informatics building, the usual place for me to hang out (the computer pool room). And finally the guy showed me how to configure things appropriately on newer Linux distributions. He used the Ubuntu 9.04 Linux distribution, but this specific configuration should work for Ubuntu 8.10 as well. I tried it on my Fedora 10 box and it worked just fine. Surprisingly, the guy wasn’t a computer science student. So what’s the special configuration? It is without using the CA certificate!!!! Gosshhhh… Had I known this earlier, I wouldn’t have had to be routed around Aachen Of course I used the NetworkManager provided by the Fedora 10 distribution instead of using the old-school network service (the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ thingy). I will never use the traditional iwlist, iwconfig, and dhclient tools anymore unless in specific circumstances where I’m forced to use them

Using the nm-tool make sure that WPA2 or WPA is supported by the wireless interface

The correct NetworkManager configuration