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USING AN IPHONE AS A HOTSPOT WITH
WPA_SUPPLICANT
Nicolas Herry
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2017/03/21
1 Using an iPhone as a hotspot with wpa_supplicant
==================================================
This is a quick post just to note down the steps required to get
a computer running `wpa_supplicant' to connect to the internet
using an iPhone hotspot. Add the following to the file
`/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf':
,----
| network={
| ssid="<Name of your iPhone>"
| psk="<Your password>"
| priority=2
| }
`----
This is rather straightforward, as you've probably a line looking
pretty much like that in your file, for you home WiFi. In the
example above, I set the `priority' to `2'; the idea is to set it
to a value that will play nicely with the other networks defined
in the file. You don't want to connect to your phone's hotspot
when you're home, but you probably want to prefer your personal
connection over everything in public places (at least I know I
do... remember I live in France, where free, unlimited and secure
public WiFi remains a wild dream). As explained in the [man page
of wpa_supplicant.conf], the default is `0', and higher values
make a network more desirable. My home network has a `priority'
of `5', public WiFis I don't want anything to do with get the
default `0', and my phone is in between with a `2'. Is that all
there is to it? well, almost. There's a catch: by default, iOS
gives your phone a name like "Sergey Brin's iPhone". This is all
well (provided you like advertising your name to everyone,
everywhere you go), but this causes a problem with
`wpa_supplicant'. For some reason, you can't connect to an SSID
containing an apostrophe. Since iOS won't let you change the
SSID, you must change the name of your phone to something more
reasonable. Now, for `wpa_supplicant' to reload its configuration
and restart the network:
,----
| # wpa_cli reconfigure
| # service netif restart
`----
You should now be connected to your iPhone's hotspot!
[man page of wpa_supplicant.conf]
<
https://www.daemon-systems.org/man/wpa_supplicant.conf.5.html>
