Setting wireless password programmatically

[ski98033]

Hi,

Several folks suggested I ask this question here. I manage 6000 OSX workstations and I need to change the WPA wireless password and add in a new wireless network. While this is easy from the GUI, I can figure out no way to do it via a script. On 10.5.x it seems that the airport network requires the wireless password to be in the user’s login.keychain and that is the fundamental problem as I can find no way to modify the user’s login.keychain as root. I have tried:

1. security – only affects the keychain of the user running the command
2. sudo & su – mac security model seems to ignore these commands
3. airport & networksetup – any changes are lost on a reboot
4. export/import network prefs – only works with modems, not the airport
5. export/import keychain items – only works with certs
6. chain new keychain to user – airport only looks at user’s login.keychain
7. put password in system keychain – airport only looks at user’s login keychain

How do other folks manage wireless network password changes across large numbers of machines?

cheers,

ski

[tlarkin]

I had similar issues, and found this:

[url]http://bigmaconcampus.wordpress.com/2009/03/25/wireless-installer-for-the-masses/[/url]

I also have used a launchd item that runs at boot and will connect to desired SSID with the passkey but it does not add to the user’s keychain.

[Author]

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