Automatic connection to wireless before login?

Hi Kappy,

Yes, that is what I gathered. But my question is: can this be changed? My wired Ethernet connection works fine before a user is logged in, so I'd like to have my wireless enabled too. I know that there is authentication involved for password-protected networks, but I'd hope that this could be set somewhere in a system keychain, or something like that.

I have seen some hints that the wireless interface can get enabled before login (esp. with regard to the 802.1X authentication interface), but since I'm not planning to deploy 802.1X on my LAN, that part doesn't seem to help much.

Any ideas? Given that this is an Apple product, surely, there must an easier way than having to hack my own LaunchDaemon to call the command-line 802.11 framework.

- essd

Ugh! I was hoping to avoid having to do some UNIX hacking, but since no one else has piped up, I figured out a semi-reasonable way to do it.

In /Library/LaunchDaemons, create a file called "com.example.airport.plist" and place the following in it:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/
PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
<key>Debug</key>
<false/>
<key>Label</key>
<string>com.example.airport</string>
<key>KeepAlive</key>
<false/>
<key>ProgramArguments</key>
<array>
<string>/Users/YOURUSERNAMEHERE/bin/join-wifi.sh</string>
</array>
<key>RunAtLoad</key>
<true/>
</dict>
</plist>

This tells it to run the script /Users/YOURUSERNAMEHERE/bin/join-wifi.sh at start-up. Obviously, replace YOURUSERNAMEHERE with your OS X username so that this corresponds to a folder off your home directory.

Then, in your home directory, make sure that you have a "bin" folder for storing scripts. Create a file therein called join-wifi.sh that contains this:

#!/bin/bash
networksetup -setairportpower en1 on
networksetup -setairportnetwork en1 your-network-name-goes-here 'your-WPA-key-goes-here'

In this last file, replace the your-network-name-goes-here with the name of the wireless network, and replace your-WPA-key-goes-here with your wireless network's password.

The next time you reboot, it should join the wireless network automatically.

That did it for me, but I sure wish there were a more elegant solution!

- essd