I have bought a Model A Pi, and I successfully configured it with a USB Wifi dongle on Raspbian. I recently prepared an SD card with the latest version of Arch Linux ARM and I am trying to get it set up with WiFi. I was trying to follow a Raspbian WiFi tutorial (thinking it could be the same as Arch Linux ARM) which said that there is a directory /etc/network/
and you could set up WiFi from the interface
file, but no directory /etc/network/
exists. I heard about netctl
but I have no Idea how to use it! I do have a supported USB WiFi dongle. Could someone please show me how I can setup WiFi on Arch Linux ARM? Thanks!
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3Have you read the wiki page? wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Netctl– Alex ChamberlainJun 16, 2013 at 7:04
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@AlexChamberlain Yes I have, but I had found it very confusing, thanks though– user151324Jun 16, 2013 at 17:19
2 Answers
The deprecated netcfg
used /etc/network.d/
to store profiles. The successor of netcfg
is netctl
.
In order to setup a wireless network, install netctl
using sudo pacman -S netctl
. Next, you have to create a network profile. /etc/netctl/examples/
contains some examples. Let's assume you want to setup a WPA2-PSK network. Simply copy over the example file and start editing:
/etc/netctl# install -m640 examples/wireless-wpa wireless-home
/etc/netctl# cat wireless-home
Description='A simple WPA encrypted wireless connection'
Interface=wlan0
Connection=wireless
Security=wpa
IP=dhcp
ESSID='MyNetwork'
# Prepend hexadecimal keys with \"
# If your key starts with ", write it as '""<key>"'
# See also: the section on special quoting rules in netctl.profile(5)
Key='WirelessKey'
# Uncomment this if your ssid is hidden
#Hidden=yes
Edit MyNetwork
and WirelessKey
as needed. Note the 640
permissions, you do not want to leak your wireless passphrase to the world!
Proceed with testing:
# netctl start wireless-home
If you do not get an error, you should be connected. Let's test this:
$ ping 8.8.8.8
To make this network start on boot:
# netctl enable wireless-home
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Use
journalctl -af
to watch your logs. There may be multiple reasons, like incorrect password or SSID. Perhaps you have to changewlan0
to something different due to a udev change, runifconfig
to determine the correct name for the wireless interface. If you have more bad luck, your USB dongle is not entirely supported by the driver. Jun 18, 2013 at 8:15 -
@Lkensteyn Okay, thanks, I have a supported wifi dongle and it worked out of the box with raspbian. I'll try it out! Thanks! Jun 18, 2013 at 14:41
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1Found this to be accurate, however, I ran into the following problems/solutions: "Profile <profile-name> does not exist or is not readable" - using a dash in the name of the profile causes some escape issues. had to take out the dash; "The interface of network profile <profile-name> is already up - had to take wlan0 down before starting my profile -
ip link wlan0 down
;netctl start <profile-name>
Jun 11, 2014 at 11:55 -
(errors above seen after running the command, failing, and then checking
journalctl -xn
) Jun 11, 2014 at 12:01
This didn't work for me at first. After following the above instructions, I had to run
systemctl enable netctl-auto@wlan0
to make it work. I found the answer at the ArchLInux Arm Forum
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Note that for this to work, you must disable all your netctl profiles first, e.g.
# netctl disable home-wifi
, and that thewlan0
has to match your interface name, not your profile under/etc/netctl/
. After that's done, this seems spot-on. Aug 11, 2014 at 23:52