Comment 14 for bug 63664

I went through this with the main zd1211rw developer on the zd1211 mailing list. The problem is that the link is not brought up before ifup tries to use it.

This will work and DHCP will get an address
ifconfig eth1 up
ifup eth1

This does not work, it is also what happens when you hotplug
ifup eth1

This is a red herring, it brings the link up as a side effect.
iwconfig eth1 essid MY_ESS_ID
If you ask for a dchp address manually after this the net will work

I believe the right question is, how do I get "ifconfig eth1 up" executed before the rest of "ifup eth1". A related question, why doesn't this bother other wireless adapters? Who is responsible for doing "ifconfig eth1 up"?

I downloaded the source for ifupdown and can barely make sense of it. It does not appear that the scripts do "ifconfig eth1 up" for anything but the loopback device.

His position is that Ubuntu is broken for not issuing the "ifconfig eth1 up" and that the driver is working fine.