How to get wifi in Arch

Operating Systems & Open Source Linux
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Disclaimer: This worked for me. It may not work for you. If you've been tinkering around with Linux, or any computers for that matter, long enough you probably already know this.

So today I installed Arch for the second time. The first time I forgot to set up all the wireless stuff during the installation, so when I rebooted and couldn't get onto the internet I gave up. Today, after many hours of Googling, I was finally able to get it to work.

This is actually my second time typing this because I got about 90% done with the first tutorial and then accidentally hit the back keyboard shortcut and everything was gone.

Anyways, I used the installation tutorial video here. Everything worked for me, but he forgot to get all the necessary stuff for wifi. So here's the easiest way I found to do it.

Note: If you're on a wired connection you don't need to use wifi-menu in step 2.
Note: You must have Arch already installed to your hdd.
Note: This only works if your wireless adapter works out of the box, or is already configured to work in Arch.
Note: Highlighted areas are the parts you type in.

  1. Boot into your installation media.
  2. wifi-menu and connect to your wifi.
  3. ping -c 3 google.com to test your internets.
  4. mount /dev/sdb2 /mnt. Mount the root directory of your Arch install.
    Note: My root was sdb2. Yours may be different.
  5. pacman --root /mnt -S iw netctl dialog wpa_supplicant wireless_tools. This gets all the necessary files for using wifi-menu in your Arch install.
    Note: I'm not sure if wireless_tools is actually necessary or not, but it doesn't hurt to have it, so just do it.
  6. reboot.
  7. Remove installation media once computer has shut down, or don't, it doesn't really matter if your hdd is first in your boot priority. Or if you have a computer like mine then it always boots to the hard drive, regardless or your boot order, for whatever reason.
  8. Once Arch is booted up, login as root.
  9. wifi-menu and connect to your wifi.
    Note: Your wifi should work now, but let's test it real quick.
  10. ping -c 3 google.com to test your internets.

If all worked well you should now be able to acces wifi-menu and connect to the internet. You will have to rerun wifi-menu every time you restart your computer, but now you can resume setting up your Arch system. Yaaaaay.

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Hi, I´m fairly new to Linux and decided to torture myself with Arch. I´ve got it installed on my Laptop wich I intend tu use for studying and stuff. I got no problems connecting to my home wifi, but i cannot connect to the wifi at the University i visit because they require you to login with your identity. I´ve got absolutely no clue on how to enter it into the wifi request.
Can you (or anybody who reads this) help me out with this? Also I´m not sure wether or not this is the right Thread for this or if I would be of better by opening a new one. Cheers

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........If you read the beginners guide on the wiki it's not that hard to do :| After you have all of that stuff set up you can even install NetworkManager and run that with WICD for a graphical handling.

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Do you have a networkmanager installed? Or what do you use to connect to a wifi?

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I use the wifi-menu command (which comes with the netctl networkmanager I believe).

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Your university is probably using a WPA2 Enterprise type of connection. Since you're using netctl, I'll point you towards this wiki page: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/WPA2_Enterprise#netctl

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I did read the Beginners Guide but i couldn´t follow it. Probably due to some lack in english and linux skills. But that WPA2 Enterprise stuff looks promising and I´m going to try it out tomorrow. So thanks for the quick help and responses.

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No problem. By the way, there are a lot of users that had similar issues (me included) in the arch forums, if you search "netctl eduroam" you would find a lot of posts.

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If you know IRC there is an Archlinux chat on freenode. You have to be registered but I frequent that chat alot. They'll help you out if you aren't sure what to do. Just be aware some people are assholes :3

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Ok I´m going to try IRC. Thanks for the hint.

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