Take the 2-minute tour ×

I'd like to run wpa_supplicant -D wext -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf on Debian startup (runlevels 2-5). I found some vague instructions from a related question that said to put a script in /etc/init.d/ and then symlink to it from the apropriate /etc/rcRUNLEVEL.d/ directories. However, I noticed that there are already some files named "wpasupplicant" that probably run at startup:





They all are symlinks to the same script, /etc/wpa_supplicant/ifupdown.sh. It has a comment at the beginning saying it "[...] allows ifup(8), and ifdown(8) to manage wpa_supplicant(8) and wpa_cli(8) processes running in daemon mode." However, the closest it gets to calling wpa_supplicant itself is (in functions.sh):

start-stop-daemon --start --oknodo $DAEMON_VERBOSITY \
    --name $WPA_SUP_PNAME --startas $WPA_SUP_BIN --pidfile $WPA_SUP_PIDFILE \
start-stop-daemon --stop --oknodo $DAEMON_VERBOSITY \
    --exec $WPA_SUP_BIN --pidfile $WPA_SUP_PIDFILE

Does that mean it's safe to make an init.d script for wpa_supplicant, and if so what would it look like?

General info:

  • Debian Squeeze (5.0)
  • official wpasupplicant package (v0.6.10-2.1)

The full contents of my system's functions.sh and ifupdown.sh are here (dependent, of course, on my system's uptime—it's a five-year-old laptop that greatly enjoys overheating):



share|improve this question

1 Answer 1

Edit the wpa_supplicant.conf file and add it to /etc/network/interfaces


share|improve this answer

Your Answer


