Wireless network interface configuration under Debian

I don’t know why, but it seems needlessly difficult to configure Debian to use a wireless network interface. Here’s what I had to do:

1. Find the name of the wireless interface. This may not be easy. Hopefully this command will show it, but if the module is not loaded then you may be SOL:

sudo iwconfig

In my case it showed the interface wlp3s0. Knowing that is a major help.

2. Create a stanza in /etc/network/interfaces for the interface:

sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces

auto wlp3s0
iface wlp3s0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid "my network"
wpa-psk f6c01d763869f5663436e131362200f2973e341c70352867096214032a5453c0

To generate the wpa-psk value use the wpa_passphrase command which is included in the wpasupplicant package