I am really new to Linux so please forgive me for this easy question. I am learning how to connect to Wifi on the terminal, and I have been trying the following

sudo ifconfig wlp7s0 up sudo iwconfig wlp7s0 essid "ABCD1234" key s:abcd1234 

And I get the error

Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) : SET failed on device wlp7s0 ; Invalid argument. 

Can someone please help? Thanks.

1 Answer

The error message you are getting is due to the fact that the key after s: shall either be 5 or 13 characters long, see e.g. here.

For example

sudo iwconfig wlp7s0 essid "ABCD1234" key s:abcd123456789 

or

sudo iwconfig wlp7s0 essid "ABCD1234" key s:abcd1 

should give you no more error message.

You can only enter 5 or 13 character passwords because iwconfig only works to connect to access points using WEP encryption.

In the case that you might want to connect to an AP with the more common WPA2 encryption, you need to use a different command line tool, e.g. wpa-supplicant or nmcli.

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