Mar 9, 2009
Mac OS X Airport Internet Sharing with Ubuntu with WEP
Have you ever tried Internet Sharing in Mac OS X for Ubuntu clients, using WEP? Did it work for you at the very first time? If not this post is for you… 
I own a 3G HSDPA internet card for my Macbook Pro and I need to share my connection to my Ubuntu laptop.
Easy, you goto System Preferences, select Sharing icon and click “Internet Sharing” for computers using Airport. If you don’t use WEP to encrypt your Wireless connection you’ll have one open Access Point to the world. So I need to use WEP to secure my network since Mac OS X Leopard does not create wireless networks with encryption other than WEP… damn!
Ok, lets create the wireless network and place a password. The problem with this “password” is that when you try to use Ubuntu NetworkManager it simply doesn’t work. Still don’t know why, but I believe it’s a Mac OS X problem, since my Windows box doesn’t work either.
So instead of typing a simple password, use a hexadecimal WEP key. Let’s consider you choose a WEP key in hexadecimal form 1234567890. You need to create your network in Mac OS X with the following key: $1234567890
The “$” tells Mac OS X the key is in hexadecimal and not a simple pass phrase. Hexadecimal keys must be 10 chars wide for 40bit WEP or 26 chars wide for 128bit WEP.
Now use the same key in Ubuntu and NetworkManager but without the “$“.
If everything went fine you’ll be able to share your internet connection.
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braceta.com
Super. I had been trying in vain to get this to work. Finally it does.
Thanks!
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genius!
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You are so awesome. This works perfectly! Thank you!
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I’m gonna try this. thanks a lot.
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works like a charm
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Hi,
Your post was extremely useful. However, I was not able to get it working with the firewall switched on on my Mac.
Do you have any idea how to resolve it? I’m just scared to switch my security off even on a Mac.
Thanks a lot,
Tibor
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braceta Reply:
August 30th, 2009 at 10:13 pm
I’m without firewall too… If I found out, I’ll post it.
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Did not help for me
MY mac is connected to the net using PPP0E, would that make a difference?
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braceta Reply:
September 6th, 2009 at 12:40 pm
Shouldn’t make any difference. Can you enable Internet Sharing with some device connected to your ethernet port?
The problem might be on the Internet Sharing and not on VMWare…
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Awsome ! Thanks a lot
.
What are the characters we can use ? 0 -> F ?
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this is soooooooo awesome!!!
thank you very much!!!!
u r a genius!!!!!!
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I’ve tried this and it’s not working. It just keeps asking me for my WEP key. Any idea?
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Also didn’t work for me initially (Ubuntu 9.10), though I got it working in the end. What seemed to solve the problem (?) was changing the network authentication in Ubuntu from ‘open system’ to ‘shared key’.
In case you don’t know how to do this:
- right-click wifi icon,
- click ‘Edit Connections’,
- click ‘Wireless’ tab,
- select the wifi network that you created with your Mac and click ‘Edit’,
- click the ‘Wireless Security’ tab
- change ‘Authentication’ to ‘Shared Key’.
Hope that helps somebody out there.
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blibla Reply:
February 26th, 2010 at 11:49 pm
This tip worked for me. For a 40 bits 5 char password. Thanks.
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[...] This article was helpful, though I had to change some things for it to work for me. [...]
Thank you so much! Worked perfectly. (With the shared key thing.)
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This worked for me with with Mac Pro tower -> Ubuntu 10.4 // with Shared Key option checked.
Thank you very much.
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