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.
by Matthew Schinckel
29 Mar 2009 at 12:11
Super. I had been trying in vain to get this to work. Finally it does.
Thanks!
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by whoa
30 Mar 2009 at 13:19
genius!
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by Andrew L
31 Mar 2009 at 05:37
You are so awesome. This works perfectly! Thank you!
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by zamri
20 May 2009 at 06:40
I’m gonna try this. thanks a lot.
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by Martin
01 Aug 2009 at 00:36
works like a charm
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by Tibor
30 Aug 2009 at 21:16
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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by JC
06 Sep 2009 at 06:24
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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by Ninety
12 Sep 2009 at 20:02
Awsome ! Thanks a lot ;).
What are the characters we can use ? 0 -> F ?
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by tatosh
06 Oct 2009 at 23:01
this is soooooooo awesome!!!
thank you very much!!!!
u r a genius!!!!!!
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by Chris Miller
02 Nov 2009 at 07:04
I’ve tried this and it’s not working. It just keeps asking me for my WEP key. Any idea?
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by Scooby Doo
11 Dec 2009 at 19:50
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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Amy Reply:
October 20th, 2010 at 11:37 am
Thank you so much! That fixed it.
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Brian Reply:
January 12th, 2011 at 10:45 pm
Thank you! I’ve been trying to do this forever!
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Mauricio Zepeda Reply:
February 20th, 2011 at 1:34 pm
Thanks man! This did the trick. I would have never found that out on my own. Using 128 WEP!
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Francisco Reply:
April 21st, 2011 at 11:23 am
This fixed my problem too!
Thank you!!
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by Landlubber » Blog Archive » Configuring Internet Sharing between an iMac running Snow Leopard, a Mac laptop, and Ubuntu netbook, and a Roku
24 Dec 2009 at 18:10
[...] This article was helpful, though I had to change some things for it to work for me. [...]
by Ri
27 Dec 2009 at 05:49
Thank you so much! Worked perfectly. (With the shared key thing.)
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by Stuart Childs
01 Jul 2010 at 17:57
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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by Geremia
14 Dec 2010 at 07:46
It doesn’t work for me with 128 bits. I am trying to get as OS 10.5.8 machine to share with Ubuntu 10.x. Thanks
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by Steve
18 Jan 2011 at 02:21
Actually, you don’t need to prefix the key on the Mac side with “$” or treat it as a numeric string. The primary issue is that the Mac needs to receive the request as a key, not as a passphrase. As it states clearly on the config screen for the Mac, you can use a 5 character key for 40 bit auth (or 13, but 5 is nominal i guess); you must use 13 characters for 128-bit auth. Other than those restrictions, you can use whatever characters you want. The odd exception to this is if you use all numeric characters, the length can be 10.
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by vasilii
15 Feb 2011 at 09:12
Thank you very much for this post. I was suffering by the same problem.
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by Bryan
25 Jul 2011 at 23:27
Sweet, this just worked for me as well, had to do the 5 character key, numbers only, no $ before it would work. Very helpful, Thanks!
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by mark
20 Sep 2011 at 21:33
Oh, God! I also suffered from this one. THANKS A LOT
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by Renato
26 Oct 2011 at 19:04
you save me
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by Gino
15 Jan 2012 at 18:21
Awesome i have been trying to find the correct way in fixing this problem. Thanks to you i finally got it. Life saver. whew.
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by nurul
16 Jan 2012 at 11:01
awsome…:D thx so much..:D
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