Moving from open wireless to protected wireless network

[#1]

During the past school year, we used an open wireless network throughout our school district. When creating our original base OS image, the Mac Book we used to create the image connected to this network, and so all Mac Books imaged with this base OS also looked to this network for wireless. This worked fine for us last year. Over the summer the district has incorporated several protected wireless networks ( Teacher Wireless, Student Wireless,etc) to replace the open wireless network for the coming school year. Do we need to create all new base os images,(One for teacher Mac Books, one for Student Mac Books, etc.) that will look to each of these individual wireless networks? How do we incorporate the wireless password to connect to each of these networks, as the district wants this to happen without user intervention, so that the wireless passwords do not need to be distributed to all teachers and students? Any help will be greatly appreciated.

Tom Queck
New Kensington Arnold School District

[jstrauss]

I'm interested in this, too; I know there's a way to do it. Currently I have two base images: one for student wireless, and one for faculty/staff. The only difference is which SSID they're using.

[winkelhe]

networksetup -setairportnetwork <network> [password]
Set AirPort Network to <network> using optional [password] if specified.

eric winkelhake
mundocomww
office 312 220 1669
cell 312 504 5155

[tlarkin]

That won't save the passkey in the keychain though, which is a big
issue. I will attack an app which an Apple Engineer gave a friend of
mine that does SSID deployment. Please note I have not tested this app
at all, but Tommy from Raytown Schools has and I got permission from the
Apple Engineer to pass this along to whomever.

Test it out first for sure, and then let us know. If the attachment is
too big I will host it on my site and post a link in a bit.

There should be a read me file in that zip file with instructions. It
is in PKG format so you should be able to deploy it via imaging

---

Thomas Larkin
TIS Department
KCKPS USD500
tlarki at kckps.org
blackberry: 913-449-7589
office: 913-627-0351

[#5]

WOW! This is brilliant! We have had a ton of issues with 10.5 and shared vs open WEP keys. We have a way to temporarily add them, but this is permanent. Its also great because we are adding a new WPA network and putting in the password on 11 carts with 30 laptops is a pain in the butt.

I tested it and it works great for us (just note that the security type- WEP, WPA, WPA2) is case sensitive).

I only wish that it wouldn't expire in December. Is there any way to get ahold of him and have him take that out?

-Matt

[tlarkin]

I was told the expiration date was something that is just on there. I
was told that he would continue to support it. I have not actually
talked to the actual developer just one of his co-workers I know. I had
planned on getting with him in the near future and posting it on my site
and I would agree to host it there and we could both help to maintain
it.

It is quite simple and it works quite well.

In the past I had a huge complicated script that was using the security
binary to modify keychains and that was a huge pain and I could never
quite get it to work.

---

Thomas Larkin
TIS Department
KCKPS USD500
tlarki at kckps.org
blackberry: 913-449-7589
office: 913-627-0351

[heathjw]

Has anyone gotten this pkg to work under Snow Leopard? I had it working under Leopard, but no luck in Snow Leopard. Is an extremely useful tool, but I'm out of luck now with SL, it appears.

- Jay Heath

Fieldston Lower
jheath at ecfs.org<mailto:jheath at ecfs.org>
o: (718) 329-7542
m: (425) 220-1328

On Aug 26, 2009, at 12:07 PM, Thomas Larkin wrote:

I was told the expiration date was something that is just on there. I was told that he would continue to support it. I have not actually talked to the actual developer just one of his co-workers I know. I had planned on getting with him in the near future and posting it on my site and I would agree to host it there and we could both help to maintain it.

It is quite simple and it works quite well.

In the past I had a huge complicated script that was using the security binary to modify keychains and that was a huge pain and I could never quite get it to work.

---

Thomas Larkin
TIS Department
KCKPS USD500
tlarki at kckps.org<mailto:tlarki at kckps.org>
blackberry: 913-449-7589
office: 913-627-0351