Comment 20 for bug 53387

I also have this problem on a fresh install of Gutsy. I am using ndiswrapper with a RaLink RT61 based card. I have used a module alias to ensure that ndiswrapper gets loaded for the card.

The interface does attempt to come up at boot. "ip a" shows that an IP address has been assigned, but it shows no-carrier and wpa_cli shows disconnected. wpa_supplicant does appear to be running at this point. An ifdown and ifup of the interface fixes the problem. In fact, I have placed an ifdown and ifup into /etc/rc.local to work around the problem.

I don't believe that the udev rule is the cause of the problem, but rather, the point during boot at which it is called. If I ifdown the interface, rmmod ndiswrapper and modprobe ndiswrapper, it comes up just fine automatically. This demonstrates that the udev rule is working correctly. This leads me to believe that wpa_supplicant has some problem running early in the boot sequence.

Is it perhaps trying to write to somewhere on the root partition, which is still mounted read-only at this point? I have had a brief look through the scripts and can't see why it might be doing this, but thought I'd throw it out there nevertheless.