How to disconnect wifi link, that was connected with wpa_supplicant

linux networking command-line wifi wpa-supplicant

11,599

Solution 1

Before connecting a to a different AP you can stop the running instance of the wpa_supplicant service:

sudo killall wpa_supplicant

Configure your /etc/wpa_supplicant/connection.conf then connect through wpa_supplicant.

Solution 2

According to this you can use wpa_cli to disconnect properly by wpa_cli disconnect I used wpa_supplicant for a long time and I'm pretty sure killing the process will result in failure when you reconnect again.

11,599

igoryonya

Updated on September 18, 2022

Comments

igoryonya over 1 year
I connect with the following command:
```
sudo wpa_supplicant -B -D nl80211 -i wlan_card -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/connection.conf
```
It connects fine, and keeps persistent connection. If AP goes down, the connection tears, if AP gets back up, the connection comes back. If I power down the wifi interface:
```
sudo ip link set wlan_card down
```
It goes down. When I bring it up with:
```
sudo ip link set wlan_card up
```
The connection, that was launched in the very beginning with wpa_supplicant, reconnects again.

Such stable, persistent connection is very good, but then it causes a problem, if I want to connect to a different AP.

When I try to use wpa_cli with any command, it just gives me the following error:
```
Failed to connect to non-global ctrl_ifname: (nil)  error: No such file or directory
```
When I try to disconnect with:
```
sudo iw dev wlan_card disconnect
```
It disconnects, but reconnects right away, so, currently, I have to reserve to:
```
ps -AlF|grep -i wpa
sudo kill -KILL wpa_pid
```
I wish to know the correct method to stop the connection, or killing is the only way?
- GAD3R almost 7 years
  
  can you add the output of ps -AlF|grep -i wpa ?