What's the purpose of wpa_cli?

[matteodavidep]

For scanning available wireless networks we can run ifconfig wlan0 scan, and to join a protected one we just edit /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf. What's the utility of wpa_cli?

Thank you.

 

[Alain De Vos]

ifconfig will only scan, if i'm correct not assign an IP-address.
wpa_cli will read wpa_supplicant and try to assign an IP-address to your wireless device & set routes.

 

[loveydovey]

wpa_cli allows you to connect to a password protected wifi network from a cli (command line interface, aka terminal). It's very useful because it outputs a lot of useful information about wpa authentication and you can choose to output a lot of debug information.

 

[kpedersen]

For scanning available wireless networks we can run ifconfig wlan0 scan, and to join a protected one we just edit /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf. What's the utility of wpa_cli?

wpi_cli allows you to dynamically connect to the wpa_supplicant socket and control it dynamically. I.e so you don't need to terminate and restart the wpa_supplicant daemon if you want to change to a different access point.

It also can modify and write the wpa_supplicant.conf

Admittedly, I don't use wpa_cli much.