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by adestefan 5349 days ago
> Configure WPA on OpenBSD: ifconfig <interface> nwid <ssid> wpa wpakey <wpakey> up; dhclient <interface> The equivalent on linux is left as an exercise...

  wpa_passphrase <ssid> <wpakey> > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
  wpa_supplicant -i<interface> -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -B
  dhclient <inteface>
Everything is easy when you know how to do it.
1 comments

On OpenBSD, all of your interface configuration is done with ifconfig and it's all documented with 'man ifconfig'.

On a linux system 'man ifconfig' doesn't even mention iwconfig or wpa_supplicant.

I think that makes it a little easier to learn how to do it.

I guess in Linux ifconfig is deprecated in favor of iproute2.
Another advantage to OpenBSD - For at least the last 10 years, configuring a network interface has been done through ifconfig.

I'm willing to wager that 10 years from now - configuring an interface will still be done through ifconfig.

It's a mistake IMO for old hats like myself. After 20 years using ifconfig, it's almost impossible to get used to some new, linux-only tool (even though it may be better).
It's pretty rare that you actually need to use ifconfig/ip directly in Linux. For every distribution that I know of there's a specific way to setup network interfaces (e.g. /etc/network/interfaces, /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-*, etc.)
Really? No Linux SA that I know...and I know a lot...is using iproute2 over ifconfig.
The "ip" command has been the preferred way to configure network interfaces in Linux for a few years now. Most functionality isn't available through "ifconfig" at all.