maemo.org - Talk - desperate for help with gconftool-2

Hi;

Benson, Brontide, or any Senior Senor and/or Senorita;

I have the wiki how-to almost ready. But, I can't find any instructions on the InternetTabletTalk wiki on how to add a new wiki article. (I've never added or edited a wiki entry before).

Also, I have several screens shots I'd like to include. I'm still confused about how to embed images, either into the wiki or a forum post. Do I have to upload them to a server that will be available to the readers, or can I store them somehow on the ITT system?

Here is the rough draft of the howto:
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HOWTO for connecting an N810 via WPA-PSK when you know the 64-hexit key but not the passphrase

Some background from WikiPedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wi-Fi_Protected_Access)

"Security in pre-shared key mode
Pre-shared key mode (PSK, also known as personal mode) is designed for home and small office networks that don't require the complexity of an 802.1X authentication server. Each user must enter a passphrase to access the network. The passphrase may be from 8 to 63 printable ASCII characters or 64 hexadecimal digits (256 bits).[2] If you choose to use the ASCII characters, a hash function reduces it from 504 bits (63 characters * 8 bits/character) to 256 bits (using also the SSID). The passphrase may be stored on the user's computer at their discretion under most operating systems to avoid re-entry. The passphrase must remain stored in the wireless access point."

Some chipset/Driver/UserInterface combinations understand that when one enters a string of 64 hexits (the PSK that is derived from an 8 to 63 ASCII character passphrase) it is not an ASCII string, and those drivers just put the 64 hexits into the PSK field without applying the PBKDF2(passphrase, SSID, 4096, 256) (more info here: http://www.xs4all.nl/~rjoris/wpapsk.html) .

However, many other chipset/driver combos, such as Linksys, the Nokia, the HP iPaq210, don't try to tell if the entry one makes when the dialog box asks "enter your pre-shared key" is the 8 to 63 character passphrase or the actual 64 hexit PSK; they expect only a passphrase, and will not accept anything longer than 63 characters. This is not so much a "bug" as it is an oversight on the part of the coders. Furthermore, they confuse the user by prompting them for a "pre-shared key", when what they really expect is an 8-63 character ASCII string.

If you have the 64-hexit PSK for an access point that is configured for WPA-PSK, you can use the gconf-editor tool to poke in those values. BTW, don't waste your time trying to "go backwards" from the PSK to the passphrase. This is complex. More information here: http://www.renderlab.net/projects/WPA-tables/

You might wonder " Why did he go to all this trouble? Just re-do the AP with a new passphrase and this time don't lose it?" . Good question - sadly, we already have over a thousand APs configured with this SSID and PSK, and until we roll out WCS/WiSM later this year, and then 802.1x, we are stuck with our current world. Our PSK was manually selected and was not generated with PBKDF2, so we never had a passphrase to begin with.

I was able to convert our 64-hexit PSK to 32, 8-bit decimal integers, and poke them into my n810 with gconf-editor. I did the conversion by hand with the Windows calculator, but you can probably find on-line converters for this. I first tried to use gconftool-2 to write the values, but it would not work, and kept giving errors I could not figure out. However, gconftool-2 is great for reading and printing out the various "registry" entries. The section of interest can be seen by running:

Quote:

gconftool-2 -R /system/osso/connectivity/IAP

As I learned more about the tool, I realized that EAP_wpa_preshared_key was a 'value'. So, I tried this:

Quote:

gconftool-2 --get /system/osso/connectivity/IAP/theParticularNetwork/EAP_wpa_preshared_key

and it printed out just the PSK value; the format looks like this:

Quote:

[123,123,123, ... 123]

gconf-editor is available via the Nokia Application Manager - "browse all" available applications and pick it from the list. Seemed to install OK, no problems with dependencies. I'm running:

Quote:

OS2008 Version: 2.2007.51-3

The hardest part was struggling with the maddening bug in the editor. I finally figured out that instead of hitting the second "OK" after editing one of the integers, if I clicked on the "title bar" at the top of the editing window, and then clicked "Cancel", it would accept the edited value without reverting to the unedited integer. It does not matter if the editor is launched in user mode or with root privilege - same maddening problem.

Here are a few screen shots that illustrate the frustrating process of manually entering the 32 separate 8-bit integer values.
<insert screen shots here>

After getting all the values in, voila! I was able to connect! Happy, Happy, Joy Joy!
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TIA,

Steve