Finding your Wifi password and other Wifi secrets

[viking60]

Most distros today come with NetworkManager.
NetworkManager comes with a CLI (command line interface) function called nmcli.

If you have networkmanager then you probably also have nmcli - if not; you can install it.

When you first connect to your Wi-Fi you have the password from your ISP and then......you forget it!

So when your brother comes to visit and wants to hook up his iPhone to your wifi - you can't help him

Well you could call your ISP and stand on your head to get the password again (or find it in GUI), but there is a better way:

Find your connection with:

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nmcli device

this will show something like this:

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DEVICE   TYPE      STATE        CONNECTION         
docker0  bridge    connected    docker0           
wlp2s0   wifi      connected    Wi-Fi connection 1

We are interested in the Wi-Fi connection name for wifi - in this case it is "Wi-Fi connection 1"

Once we have established that; we can reveal all the secrets of that connection - including password with:

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nmcli --show-secrets connection show "Wi-Fi connection 1"

The password will be on a line called something like 802-11-wireless-security.psk

It is that easy.

Of course you will never remember this command so why not make an alias - like this:

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alias wifisecrets='nmcli --show-secrets connection show "Wi-Fi connection 1"'

Or maby make it password specific;

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alias wifipassword='nmcli --show-secrets connection show "Wi-Fi connection 1" |grep 802-11-wireless-security.psk'

Now you can simply type wifipassword in a terminal and there it is

Time for me to reveal a little secret in the end:
This is not limited to wifi

[R_Head]

Pretty good...

On my case, I have an ACL and limted amount of reserved IPs

When visit wants to use my WiFi, I enable my Cell Phone hotspot. It has an old Unlimited Data plan that ATT wants me to get off it.