Wireless networking does not work on bootup (without NetworkManager)

[Alexander Jones]

Once I have booted, I can run "/etc/init.d/networking restart" and my wireless network adapter acquires an association and gets a DHCP response.

For some reason, it doesn't do this automatically, or maybe it tries and fails, I'm not sure how to tell.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Tue Nov 13 17:30:29 2007
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 7.10
NonfreeKernelModules: vmnet vmblock vmmon fglrx
Uname: Linux flash 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Sun Oct 14 23:05:12 GMT 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

[Alexander Jones (alex-weej)]

After booting, iwconfig wlan0 shows that there is no ESSID set. If I do an "ifconfig wlan0 up", i get "Link is not ready" in my system log. This is the same message that shows up earlier in my system log when the "networking" service attempts to set it up in the first place.

If I start the "networking" service, nothing happens, it just says "Configuration network interfaces..." I have to /restart/ it in order for the wireless configuration to complete. Having done that, I see "Link is ready", and it shows me getting a DHCP response.

So it seems that, for some reason, the service is failing to set up my wireless config (ESSID, WPA2 key, etc.) at boot time, but after everything has started I can do it again and it works fine.

[Alexander Jones (alex-weej)]

Here is my /etc/network/interfaces:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid crack
wpa-psk ...(key here)
auto wlan0

[Alexander Sack (asac)]

NM 0.7 ships now a way to configure system connections, so your problem triggering the bug should be fixed.