______________________________________________

                 USING AN IPHONE AS A HOTSPOT WITH
                          WPA_SUPPLICANT

                           Nicolas Herry
          ______________________________________________


                            2017/03/21





1 Using an iPhone as a hotspot with wpa_supplicant
==================================================

  This is a quick post just to note down the steps required to get
  a computer running `wpa_supplicant' to connect to the internet
  using an iPhone hotspot. Add the following to the file
  `/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf':
  ,----
  | network={
  |     ssid="<Name of your iPhone>"
  |     psk="<Your password>"
  |     priority=2
  | }
  `----
  This is rather straightforward, as you've probably a line looking
  pretty much like that in your file, for you home WiFi. In the
  example above, I set the `priority' to `2'; the idea is to set it
  to a value that will play nicely with the other networks defined
  in the file. You don't want to connect to your phone's hotspot
  when you're home, but you probably want to prefer your personal
  connection over everything in public places (at least I know I
  do... remember I live in France, where free, unlimited and secure
  public WiFi remains a wild dream). As explained in the [man page
  of wpa_supplicant.conf], the default is `0', and higher values
  make a network more desirable. My home network has a `priority'
  of `5', public WiFis I don't want anything to do with get the
  default `0', and my phone is in between with a `2'. Is that all
  there is to it? well, almost. There's a catch: by default, iOS
  gives your phone a name like "Sergey Brin's iPhone". This is all
  well (provided you like advertising your name to everyone,
  everywhere you go), but this causes a problem with
  `wpa_supplicant'. For some reason, you can't connect to an SSID
  containing an apostrophe. Since iOS won't let you change the
  SSID, you must change the name of your phone to something more
  reasonable. Now, for `wpa_supplicant' to reload its configuration
  and restart the network:
  ,----
  | # wpa_cli reconfigure
  | # service netif restart
  `----
  You should now be connected to your iPhone's hotspot!


[man page of wpa_supplicant.conf]
<https://www.daemon-systems.org/man/wpa_supplicant.conf.5.html>