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A passionate programmer’s findings in the world of internet.

Configure WEP Wireless on XBian (XBMC)

November 13th, 2012

This could be something extremely easy for the pro, but it took me hours to set this up. I'm using an old TP-Link wireless adapter. After installing the latest XBian (1.0 alpha 2) on my Raspberry Pi, I found no way to get myself to the terminal, even after pressing "Exit" from XBMC screen.

I had to plug in a network cable and ssh into it. For this version, the login details are:

user: xbian
password: raspberry

Whenever you run sudo, the password is "raspberry" too.

Once logged in, exit the blue setup screen. Then run the following command:

/sbin/ifconfig

You should see a new "wlan0" on top of the existing "eth0" and "lo" entries, if the wireless adapter was detected and installed correctly. I'm not sure what to do if it's not!

Run the following command to install the wireless tool.

sudo apt-get install wireless-tools

Then run the following command to set your WEP settings.

sudo /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 essid <ssid>
sudo /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 key <key>
sudo ifup wlan0

You should get your WEP wifi working by now. Alternatively, you can configure by editing your /etc/network/interfaces to something similar to the following:

auto lo

iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid <ssid>
wireless-key <password>

#wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
wireless-power off
iface default inet dhcp

Hope somebody would find this helpful. Do note that WEP is not secure enough for your wifi, always go for WPA2 whenever possible.

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5 Responses


Liggerstuxin says:

When you say , are the parenthesis included? Or is it just my ssid?


Liggerstuxin says:

I want to know if those narrow parenthesis surrounding the ssid and key are included in the input.?


Eng Lee says:

The parenthesis should be removed, just write in your ssid and password.


imdumb says:

How would you configure for WPA, as opposed to WEP?

I take it the xbian wifi config is broken as of alpha 2?

I tried the blue setup screen for WPA and it didn’t work.


EngLee says:

imdumb,

Use the following settings in your interfaces file:

wpa-ssid <ssid>
wpa-psk <password>

Replacing my wireless-essid and wireless-key. Can’t guarantee it would work though. And you may need to uncomment the WPA-roam line.