iwd/src/iwd.config.rst

iwd.config

Configuration file for wireless daemon

Author

Marcel Holtmann <marcel@holtmann.org>

Author

Denis Kenzior <denkenz@gmail.com>

Author

Andrew Zaborowski <andrew.zaborowski@intel.com>

Author

Tim Kourt <tim.a.kourt@linux.intel.com>

Author

James Prestwood <prestwoj@gmail.com>

Copyright

2013-2019 Intel Corporation

Version

iwd

Date

22 September 2019

Manual section

5

Manual group

Linux Connectivity

SYNOPSIS

Configuration file main.conf

DESCRIPTION

The main.conf configuration file configures the system-wide settings for iwd. This file lives in the configuration directory specified by the environment variable $CONFIGURATION_DIRECTORY, which is normally provided by systemd. In the absence of such an environment variable it defaults to /etc/iwd. If no main.conf is present, then default values are chosen. The presence of main.conf is not required.

FILE FORMAT

See iwd.network for details on the file format.

SETTINGS

The settings are split into several categories. Each category has a group associated with it and described in separate tables below.

General Settings

The group [General] contains general settings.

EnableNetworkConfiguration	Values: true, false Enable network configuration. Setting this option to true enables iwd to configure the network interfaces with the IP addresses. There are two types IP addressing supported by iwd: static and dynamic. The static IP addresses are configured through the network configuration files. If no static IP configuration has been provided for a network, iwd will attempt to obtain the dynamic addresses from the network through the built-in DHCP client. This also enables network configuration and the DHCP server when in AP mode and the AP profile being activated does not override it. The network configuration feature is disabled by default. See [Network] settings for additional settings related to network configuration.
UseDefaultInterface	Values: true, false Do not allow iwd to destroy / recreate wireless interfaces at startup, including default interfaces. Enable this behavior if your wireless card driver is buggy or does not allow such an operation, or if you do not want iwd to manage netdevs for another reason. For most users with an upstream driver it should be safe to omit/disable this setting.
AddressRandomization	Values: disabled, once, network If AddressRandomization is set to disabled, the default kernel behavior is used. This means the kernel will assign a mac address from the permanent mac address range provided by the hardware / driver. Thus it is possible for networks to track the user by the mac address which is permanent. If AddressRandomization is set to once, MAC address is randomized a single time when iwd starts or when the hardware is detected for the first time (due to hotplug, etc.) If AddressRandomization is set to network, the MAC address is randomized on each connection to a network. The MAC is generated based on the SSID and permanent address of the adapter. This allows the same MAC to be generated each time connecting to a given SSID while still hiding the permanent address.
AddressRandomizationRange	Values: full, nic One can control which part of the address is randomized using this setting. When using AddressRandomizationRange set to nic, only the NIC specific octets (last 3 octets) are randomized. Note that the randomization range is limited to 00:00:01 to 00:00:FE. The permanent mac address of the card is used for the initial 3 octets. When using AddressRandomizationRange set to full, all 6 octets of the address are randomized. The locally-administered bit will be set.
RoamThreshold	Value: rssi dBm value, from -100 to 1, default: -70 This value can be used to control how aggressively iwd roams when connected to a 2.4Ghz access point.
RoamThreshold5G	Value: rssi dBm value, from -100 to 1, default: -76 This value can be used to control how aggressively iwd roams when connected to a 5GHz access point.
RoamRetryInterval	Value: unsigned int value in seconds (default: 60) Specifies how long iwd will wait before attempting to roam again if the last roam attempt failed, or if the signal of the newly connected BSS is still considered weak.
ManagementFrameProtection	Values: 0, 1 or 2 When ManagementFrameProtection is 0, MFP is completely turned off, even if the hardware is capable. This setting is not recommended. When ManagementFrameProtection is 1, MFP is enabled if the local hardware and remote AP both support it. When ManagementFrameProtection is 2, MFP is always required. This can prevent successful connection establishment on some hardware or to some networks.
ControlPortOverNL80211	Values: false, true Enable/Disable sending EAPoL packets over NL80211. Enabled by default if kernel support is available. Doing so sends all EAPoL traffic over directly to the supplicant process (iwd) instead of putting these on the Ethernet device. Since only the supplicant can usually make sense / decrypt these packets, enabling this option can save some CPU cycles on your system and avoids certain long-standing race conditions.
DisableANQP	Values: false, true Enable/disable ANQP queries. The way IWD does ANQP queries is dependent on a recent kernel patch (available in Kernel 5.3). If your kernel does not have this functionality this should be disabled (default). Some drivers also do a terrible job of sending public action frames (freezing or crashes) which is another reason why this has been turned off by default. If you want to easily utilize Hotspot 2.0 networks, then setting DisableANQP to false is recommended.
DisableOCV	Value: false, true Disable Operating Channel Validation. Support for this is not advertised by the kernel so if kernels/drivers exist which don't support OCV it can be disabled here.
SystemdEncrypt Warning: This is a highly experimental feature	Value: Systemd key ID Enables network profile encryption using a systemd provided secret key. Once enabled all PSK/8021x network profiles will be encrypted automatically. Once the profile is encrypted there is no way of going back using IWD alone. A tool, iwd-decrypt-profile, is provided assuming the secret is known which will decrypt a profile. This decrypted profile could manually be set to /var/lib/iwd to 'undo' any profile encryption, but its going to be a manual process. Setting up systemd to provide the secret is left up to the user as IWD has no way of performing this automatically. The systemd options required are LoadCredentialEncrypted or SetCredentialEncrypted, and the secret identifier should be named whatever SystemdEncrypt is set to.
Country	Value: Country Code (ISO Alpha-2) Requests the country be set for the system. Note that setting this is simply a request to set the country, and does not guarantee the country will be set. For a self-managed wiphy it is never possible to set the country from userspace. For other devices any regulatory domain request is just a 'hint' and ultimately left up to the kernel to set the country.

Network

The group [Network] contains network configuration related settings.

EnableIPv6	Values: true, false Sets the global default that tells iwd whether it should configure IPv6 addresses and routes (either provided via static settings, Router Advertisements or DHCPv6 protocol). This setting is enabled by default. This setting can also be overridden on a per-network basis.
NameResolvingService	Values: resolvconf, systemd, none Configures a DNS resolution method used by the system. This configuration option must be used in conjunction with EnableNetworkConfiguration and provides the choice of system resolver integration. If not specified, systemd is used as default. If none is specified, then DNS and domain name information is ignored.
RoutePriorityOffset	Values: uint32 value (default: 300) Configures a route priority offset used by the system to prioritize the default routes. The route with lower priority offset is preferred. If not specified, 300 is used as default.

Blacklist

The group [Blacklist] contains settings related to blacklisting of BSSes. If iwd determines that a connection to a BSS fails for a reason that indicates the BSS is currently misbehaving or misconfigured (e.g. timeouts, unexpected status/reason codes, etc), then iwd will blacklist this BSS and avoid connecting to it for a period of time. These options let the user control how long a misbehaved BSS spends on the blacklist.

InitialTimeout	Values: uint64 value in seconds (default: 60) The initial time that a BSS spends on the blacklist.
Multiplier	Values: unsigned int value in seconds (default: 30) If the BSS was blacklisted previously and another connection attempt has failed after the initial timeout has expired, then the BSS blacklist time will be extended by a multiple of Multiplier for each unsuccessful attempt up to MaxiumTimeout time in seconds.
MaximumTimeout	Values: uint64 value in seconds (default: 86400) Maximum time that a BSS is blacklisted.

Rank

The group [Rank] contains settings related to ranking of networks for autoconnect purposes.

BandModifier2_4Ghz	Values: floating point value (default: 1.0) Increase or decrease the preference for 2.4GHz access points by increasing or decreasing the value of this modifier. A value of 0.0 will disable the 2.4GHz band and prevent scanning or connecting on those frequencies.
BandModifier5Ghz	Values: floating point value (default: 1.0) Increase or decrease the preference for 5GHz access points by increasing or decreasing the value of this modifier. 5GHz networks are already preferred due to their increase throughput / data rate. However, 5GHz networks are highly RSSI sensitive, so it is still possible for IWD to prefer 2.4Ghz APs in certain circumstances. A value of 0.0 will disable the 5GHz band and prevent scanning or connecting on those frequencies.
BandModifier6Ghz	Values: floating point value (default: 1.0) Increase or decrease the preference for 6GHz access points by increasing or decreasing the value of this modifier. Since 6GHz networks are highly RSSI sensitive, this gives an option to prefer 6GHz APs over 5GHz APs. A value of 0.0 will disable the 6GHz band and prevent scanning or connecting on those frequencies.

Scan

The group [Scan] contains settings related to scanning functionality. No modification from defaults is normally required.

DisablePeriodicScan	Values: true, false Disable periodic scan. Setting this option to 'true' will prevent iwd from issuing the periodic scans for the available networks while disconnected. The behavior of the user-initiated scans isn't affected. The periodic scan is enabled by default.
InitialPeriodicScanInterval	Values: unsigned int value in seconds (default: 10) The initial periodic scan interval upon disconnect.
MaximumPeriodicScanInterval	Values: unsigned int value in seconds (default: 300) The maximum periodic scan interval.
DisableRoamingScan	Values: true, false Disable roaming scan. Setting this option to 'true' will prevent iwd from trying to scan when roaming decisions are activated. This can prevent iwd from roaming properly, but can be useful for networks operating under extremely low rssi levels where roaming isn't possible.

IPv4

The group [IPv4] contains settings related to IPv4 network configuration.

APAddressPool

Values: comma-separated list of prefix-notation IP strings Defines the space of IPs used for the Access Point-mode subnet addresses and the DHCP server. Defaults to 192.168.0.0/16. The prefix length decides the size of the pool from which an address is selected but the actual subnet size (netmask) is based on the AP profile being activated and defaults to 28 bits. The AP profile's [IPv4].Address setting overrides the global value set here. Setting a too small address space will limit the number of access points that can be running simultaneously on different interfaces.

DriverQuirks

The group [DriverQuirks] contains special flags associated with drivers that are buggy or just don't behave similar enough to the majority of other drivers.

DefaultInterface	Values: comma-separated list of drivers or glob matches If a driver in use matches one in this list IWD will not attempt to remove and re-create the default interface.
ForcePae	Values: comma-separated list of drivers or glob matches If a driver in use matches one in this list ControlPortOverNL80211 will not be used, and PAE will be used instead. Some drivers do not properly support ControlPortOverNL80211 even though they advertise support for it.
PowerSaveDisable	Values: comma-separated list of drivers or glob matches If a driver in user matches one in this list power save will be disabled.

SEE ALSO

iwd(8), iwd.network(5)