Setup WiFi on Ubuntu Server 20

Have you ever struggled to do something that sounded so simple such as connecting to a god forsaken wifi network on Ubuntu Server? Well me too and here is how you do it. What’s more is if you basically don’t install anything you keep the server clean and wifi and lan can both work at the same time without hassle.

If you think you are clever and can do this without the internet, sorry. You’re going to have to walk over to the router and plug the thing in.

Step 1, aka the step that every tutorial leaves out!

wpasupplicant handles wifi security. Without it, you can not even hope to use wifi, so I find it preposterous that every tutorial leaves this step out!

sudo apt-get install wpasupplicant

Now that you have accomplished the most important task, you must now find the interface name of your wifi card:

ls /sys/class/net

It will output some names but you are going to have to flex your pattern recognition skills and find one that looks like wlan0 or wlp2s0. That’s the wifi.

Edit your netplan configuration file

sudo nano /etc/netplan/00-installer-config.yaml

network:
  ethernets:
    eno1:
      dhcp4: true
      optional: true
  version: 2
  wifis:
    wlp2s0:
      optional: true
      access-points:
        "FBI Surveillance Van":
          password: "SeriesOfTubes"
      dhcp4: true

sudo netplan --debug generate
sudo netplan --debug apply
sudo reboot

More notes

Yeah, so in summary there was no need for learning network-manager, creating unnecessary conflicts by mixing in deprecated packages like ifconfig. Really wish this guide wasn’t buried by Google!