How to prevent wpa_supplicant from connecting to a network, while allowing other networks

Question

Based on this answer I try to configure wpa_supplicant as follows:

network={
        ssid="known_to_be_bad"
        key_mgmt=NONE
        disabled=1
}
network={
        key_mgmt=NONE
        priority=-10
}

The idea is that the known_to_be_bad network is not to be used, but I still want wpa_supplicant to consider any other open network.

But with this configuration, it can still happen that wpa_supplicant connects to the bad networking, showing this upon list_networks:

110 known_to_be_bad any [DISABLED]
111     any [CURRENT]

Can I blacklist this ssid more reliably?

Answer 1

it looks like disabled may not be universally supported. it's listed in the link below, but not in freeBSD's wpa_supplicant.conf(5).

however.. there's a couple possible issues with your config:

• your catch-all is priority=-10, but not having a priority will default to priority=0. since 0 > -10, your first "bad" network will try to connect first.
• if scan_ssid=1 and ap_scan=2, priority is ignored and will use the order in the config file (according to example conf). try moving your "bad" network to the end of the file.
• i haven't seen a negative priority used before, and have no idea if it could be an issue, but if nothing else, maybe try sliding your priorities to >= 0?