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I have bought a Model A Pi, and I successfully configured it with a USB Wifi dongle on Raspbian. I recently prepared an SD card with the latest version of Arch Linux ARM and I am trying to get it set up with WiFi. I was trying to follow a Raspbian WiFi tutorial (thinking it could be the same as Arch Linux ARM) which said that there is a directory /etc/network/ and you could set up WiFi from the interface file, but no directory /etc/network/ exists. I heard about netctl but I have no Idea how to use it! I do have a supported USB WiFi dongle. Could someone please show me how I can setup WiFi on Arch Linux ARM? Thanks!

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    Have you read the wiki page? wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Netctl Commented Jun 16, 2013 at 7:04
  • @AlexChamberlain Yes I have, but I had found it very confusing, thanks though Commented Jun 16, 2013 at 17:19

2 Answers 2

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The deprecated netcfg used /etc/network.d/ to store profiles. The successor of netcfg is netctl.

In order to setup a wireless network, install netctl using sudo pacman -S netctl. Next, you have to create a network profile. /etc/netctl/examples/ contains some examples. Let's assume you want to setup a WPA2-PSK network. Simply copy over the example file and start editing:

/etc/netctl# install -m640 examples/wireless-wpa wireless-home /etc/netctl# cat wireless-home Description='A simple WPA encrypted wireless connection' Interface=wlan0 Connection=wireless Security=wpa IP=dhcp ESSID='MyNetwork' # Prepend hexadecimal keys with \" # If your key starts with ", write it as '""<key>"' # See also: the section on special quoting rules in netctl.profile(5) Key='WirelessKey' # Uncomment this if your ssid is hidden #Hidden=yes

Edit MyNetwork and WirelessKey as needed. Note the 640 permissions, you do not want to leak your wireless passphrase to the world!

Proceed with testing:

# netctl start wireless-home

If you do not get an error, you should be connected. Let's test this:

$ ping 8.8.8.8

To make this network start on boot:

# netctl enable wireless-home
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  • I am getting an error that the job failed, what should I do? Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 0:19
  • Use journalctl -af to watch your logs. There may be multiple reasons, like incorrect password or SSID. Perhaps you have to change wlan0 to something different due to a udev change, run ifconfig to determine the correct name for the wireless interface. If you have more bad luck, your USB dongle is not entirely supported by the driver. Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 8:15
  • @Lkensteyn Okay, thanks, I have a supported wifi dongle and it worked out of the box with raspbian. I'll try it out! Thanks! Commented Jun 18, 2013 at 14:41
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    Found this to be accurate, however, I ran into the following problems/solutions: "Profile <profile-name> does not exist or is not readable" - using a dash in the name of the profile causes some escape issues. had to take out the dash; "The interface of network profile <profile-name> is already up - had to take wlan0 down before starting my profile - ip link wlan0 down; netctl start <profile-name> Commented Jun 11, 2014 at 11:55
  • (errors above seen after running the command, failing, and then checking journalctl -xn) Commented Jun 11, 2014 at 12:01
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This didn't work for me at first. After following the above instructions, I had to run

systemctl enable netctl-auto@wlan0

to make it work. I found the answer at the ArchLInux Arm Forum

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  • Note that for this to work, you must disable all your netctl profiles first, e.g. # netctl disable home-wifi, and that the wlan0 has to match your interface name, not your profile under /etc/netctl/. After that's done, this seems spot-on. Commented Aug 11, 2014 at 23:52

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