Connecting to a hidden wireless network on Kubuntu

This maybe helps:

sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid name_of_the_hidden_essid

Things to note:

• sudo runs the command as an administrator.
• iwconfig allows you to configure the wireless interface.
• The identifier wlan0 can be something like eth1, execute the iwconfig command for a list.
• essid is the name of the Extended Service Set Identification.

More information on essid can be found in this Wikipedia article, and man iwconfig.

There seems to be general issue with KDE's Network Manager and hidden wireless networks - you can see (and vote for!) the bug here: https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=209464.

I also have the problem using Kubuntu (both 9.10 and now on 10.04 beta) and have found installing the network manager from Gnome/Ubuntu makes it connect. An even easier solution would of cause be to just start broadcasting the SSID (as far as I know it doesn't really add much protection anyway, but I can't configure the router at work).

Hope more people will vote for this bug and that someone will fix it!

Create the connection in connection manager, with all correct settings,

then in terminal: (replace hidden_ssid with the actual SSID of the network)

sudo iwlist wlan0 scan essid *HIDDEN_SSID*

Then go back to network manager. It should now show the hidden network.

Click on it to connect.