How to prevent wpa_supplicant from connecting to a network

Question

How can I persistently prevent a wireless interface using wpa_supplicant in roaming mode from connecting to a particular open network foo?

This doesn't work:

$ sudo wpa_cli
> blacklist 00:11:22:33:44:55
FAIL

Nor does the following:

/etc/network/interfaces:

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet manual
  wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

wpa_supplicant.conf:

network={
 ssid="foo"
 key_mgmt=NONE
 priority=0
}

Solution 1

You can set the option disabled=1 in the corresponding network entry in wpa_supplicant.conf. This will prevent wpa_supplicant from automatically connecting to the network (it'll still try to connect to it if you specifically ask it to do so).

Solution 2

It appears that you can't. While you can set "disabled=1" for any given rule, that disables the rule for that connection, but doesn't block other rules that might match. So if you have it configured to auto-connect to open WiFi, that catch-all rule will still match even if you have a separate one for the specific SSID that is disabled.

Obviously, this is only an issue for open networks (which typically then require some sort of login to get real access). If there were a password, then the "disabled=1" option, or just removing the entry altogether would obviously solve the problem.

Comments

[DrBeco]

where is this file on debian Jessie?

[lgeorget]

Usually it's /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

[DrBeco]

Thanks Igeorget. The directory exists and there are some scripts there, but no wpa_supplicant.conf. Maybe there is no configuration file at all in the default installation for Debian Jessie?

[lgeorget]

Hmm I guess not. You probably have to create it. You could look for an example in /usr/share/doc/wpa_supplicant... But the easiest is probably to use a graphical tool to configure your network such as NetworkManager or wpa_cli.

[Joachim Breitner]

Here, it does not work in the presence of a catch-all entry; see this question about it.