wi-fi


Anonabox Pro – Disable Wi-Fi

The following video demonstrates how to disable the Wi-Fi on an  Anonabox Pro.

  1. Connect to the device via the LAN Ethernet port.
    It has a build DHCP server by default so you do not need to configure the IP.
    After you get connected, go to the default location of the device interface, which is http://192.168.19.84:1776/.
  2. After the interface loads, enter the root password and click on the Login button.
    (if you are using a brand new Anonabox or a box that was recently flashed then click on the Login button without entering a password (if you enter one, it will be ignored)).
  3. Then, go to the top menu Network and select the option Wireless
  4. At the new page, under the category Wireless Overview click on the Disable button.
  5. Finally, click on the OK button when you get the Really shut down network? confirmation box and wait for the changes to get applied, the image with the Wi-Fi logo will change to one that has a red stamp on it and right under the SSID field you will get the message Wireless is disabled or not associated.

To enable the WiFi, just repeat the steps above and click on the Enable button.


Qubes OS: Connect to Wi-Fi or Ethernet or another network 1

A couple of days ago we decided to give Qubes OS a go and see what it could do for a regular user. The installation was easy as it uses the same installer as Fedora, so we just created a live USB and formatted a laptop that had built in Wi-Fi.

To our surprise, we could not figure out how to change the network settings and activate an internet connection! Going to the NetworkManager (nm), even with root, would show us all fields as disabled when trying to create any new connection!

Some time passed before we realized that the NetworkManager of XFCE4 was not the way to go. After inspecting the Virtual Machines on the Qubes VM Manager, we saw that the sys-net VM was the only one that had in its hardware settings to access the Ethernet and Wi-Fi modules. So we got the hint, we needed to modify sys-net in order to connect the entire OS with its VMs to the network.

To modify the settings of the sys-net VM we needed access to the Settings Application, which was not available in the application menu. So the first thing we did, was to use the sys-net: Add more shortcuts... option under the group ServiceVM: sys-net to enable the Settings application shortcut.

In the [Dom0] Settings: sys-net window, we went to the Applications tab, on the left list we scrolled down to find the Settings option.

After selecting the Settings option, we clicked on the > button to move the Settings option to the right list.

Then we clicked on the OK button to apply the changes.

Going back to the application menu and the group ServiceVM: sys-net we could see the new option for sys-net: Settings.

Clicking on the sys-net: Settings showed us the usual settings manager for Gnome.

From there on, our job was easy, we just clicked on the Network option that gave us the window to modify all network settings. Then we selected the Wi-Fi network that we wanted to connect to, which worked without a hitch!

Finally, we had to test if the configuration was working as expected. From the application menu, under the group Domain: personal, we selected the option personal: Firefox to start the Firefox application on the personal VM.

Once Firefox started we could see that internet connection was active and everything was working as expected!


Login to ‘CytaVoda WiFi’ with no password using your SIM card 1

Using Android devices that carry Cytamobile-Vodafone SIM cards with active RED and BLACK plans, you can connect to the CytaVoda WiFi using SIM authentication instead of using a password.

To do so

  • from the Wi-Fi manager of your cell phone click to connect on the CytaVoda WiFi network
  • at the new window click on the drop-down named EAP method
  • and select the option SIM
  • finally click on the Connect button.

The system will validate you and no further steps needed.

You will notice that your Wi-Fi manager will show a slightly different window than the usual when you click to connect on the network. This is normal as the network offers multiple authentication methods and it is giving you the option to choose which one to use. Of course, we do not know the password and the purpose of this post is to demonstrate the SIM authentication method.

The CytaVoda WiFi has a drawback, it does not offer unlimited data to the users.
Depending on what your SIM plan is, you will have a different monthly data allowance which is renewed every 1st of the month.

The data allowance limits that were applied at the time this post was written, were the following:

  • 200MB for: RED 1
  • 500MB for: RED 2
  • 1GB (1024MB) for: RED 3
  • 2GB (2048MB) for: RED 4 / RED Family / RED Plus / BLACK

You can check the amount of CytaVoda WiFi data that you consumed and the remaining data at the page http://miu.cyta.com.cy.


Fedora 25 with GNOME 3: Making a Wi-Fi hotspot 7

Recently we tried to create a Wi-Fi hotspot on Fedora 25 running GNOME 3.

When we clicked on the Use as Hotspot... button  on the network manager it did not activate the hotspot.
Actually, nothing changed after we clicked on the button.
We tried this several times, some while being disconnected from all networks, others with having the Wi-Fi device disabled etc. None of the tests payed out.

To mitigate the problem, we used nm-connection-editor to create the hotspot configuration and then activate it from the network manager.

After we starter nm-connection-editor, we pressed the Add button to create a new configuration:

From the prompt, we selected the option Wi-Fi and then clicked on the Create... button.

In the newly appeared window, we filled in

  • the Connection name (which is not used by the system, it is only for us to identify which configuration this is),
  • then the SSID (which is the name of the network you will create and connect to),
  • we set Mode to Hotspot

Then we switched to the Wi-Fi Security tab where we filled in the type of protection we want the hotspot to have and the password for it.

We clicked Save and then we closed the Network Connections window as well.

From the network manager, we clicked on Use as Hotspot... button and then the Turn On button on the confirmation popup to finish the activation.

After this, the network manager changed its screen and showed a page which had all the necessary information that are needed to connect to our newly created hotspot.

Note:

In case you cannot connect because the password verification fails even though you are providing the correct password, you can always do the ugly hack of setting up a hotspot with no security to get your job done…