Raspberry Pi’s are great but there can be some limitations in the cut-down GUI utilities they come with. One of these is joining of enterprise/corporate WiFi networks, the sort that require username/password authentication rather than a single pre-shared key.

Luckily there’s quite a lot of guides out there for different networks here and there (including eduroam) but it took me a few goes to get a Pi with a nano network adaptor working on the QUB WiFi (_QUB_WiFi), so here’s the configuration you need (note this works for me, it could well be I don’t need all the options – but with this it auto-connects in about 15 seconds).

You need to edit the /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file and add a network section as follows:

network={
    ssid="_QUB_WiFi"
    key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
    eap=PEAP
    identity="*QUB-STAFFSTUDENT-NUMBER*"
    password="*QUB-NETWORK-PASSWORD*"
    phase1="peaplabel=0"
    phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
    disabled=0
    mode=0
}

To test this you can run: sudo wpa_supplicant -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

And have a look at the output – note on another terminal you’ll have to run: sudo dhclient wlan0

Once it’s connected to get an IP address (on normal login after bootup it’ll do all that for you).