Q:

Setting up WiFi on ArchLinux

Question
I have a USB wifi dongle. I am running Arch Linux on my Pi. How would I connect to my network, despite the fact that my wi-fi has a password?
Thoughts
I am trying to find out where and how I can set up my wifi USB adapter in Arch. I assume it would either be in dev or the adapter. The config file for the wifi would most likely be in etc. Is this accurate?

A:

Check the output of lsusb and make sure that the device is being detected. Then, check ip a and see if it shows the device in the list. If not then you'll have to use the information given about the device from lsusb or if you already know the device's make and model then you can just use that. Then do some research to find out what modules the device requires. Next, check pacman and the AUR for the modules that your wireless interface requires. 
Once installed, you can use modprobe to load the module and then recheck ip a to confirm that the device is now being recognized by the system. Then you can use either netcfg or netctl to setup your network network configuration accordingly. Both network managers have great examples and documentation that will help you along the way.
NOTE - netctl is in the [testing] repository at the moment. You will need to make sure that this is uncommented in /etc/pacman.conf in order to activate the repository. In the future netctl will be replacing netcfg. Best of luck.

