Operation Manual

set by the access point on connection.
• Power Management—The current status of the adapter’s power management functionality, which reduces the device’s
power demands when the wireless network is idle. This has little effect on the Pi, but is typically enabled for battery-powered
devices like a laptop.
Figure 4-5: The output of iwconfig when not connected to a wireless network
To connect the Pi to a wireless network, you will need to add some lines into the /etc/network/interfaces file. (For full
details on how this file is laid out, see the “Wired Networking” section earlier in this chapter.) First, open the file in the nano text
editor:
sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces
At the bottom of the file, create a new entry for the USB wireless adapter that reads as follows (see Figure 4-6):
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-conf /etc/wpa.conf
Figure 4-6: Editing the interfaces file for wireless network access