Open Directory binding and 802.1x authentication

[Anonymous]

At our research lab, our network department has decided to deploy 802.1x authentication on all network connections, both wlan and ethernet. The client can connect to the wlan or fixed network but to get an IP it has to be authenticated. IT’s an understandable decision but it gives us severe problems because we use a close binding to our OpenDirectory using Mobile home directories.

For this to work, we would need the computer to initiate the 802.1x connection before the login window and I cannot get this to work.

I guess that the login window is running as the root user so I tried to log in as root and setup the wireless network and to authenticate to it using 802.1x. In all other users I can get it to do this automatically when the user logs in but this doesn’t work in the root user! I don’t know why it should differ, but it does. On login as root, it connects to the wireless network but without connecting 802.1x. One needs to do this manually, and this doesn’t work in the login window naturally.

Does anyone know how to initiate a 802.1x connection from the terminal and how I should set this up to execute before the login window connects to the directory?

I rellay need help with this so any suggestions are highly appreciated.

Regards
Tomas

[Author]

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