Hello,

I am trying to get a laptop working through wireless to connect to my backend - and I am pretty close to achieving that, however I cannot get the connection to start up automatically.

I have followed this guide and have got a successful connection to my WPA network. I then followed this guide to use netcfg to start it up automagically... but it doesn't work.

There is nothing being logged in any file in /var/log and it seems that no matter what i put in rc.conf, it doesn't seem to try to bring up the connection.

This is what I currently do to start wireless:

Then I need to manually obtain an IP address:

then all is good.

Any suggestions to make this happen with every boot?

Thanks,
Al

Hi Al (does anyone read that and not think of Katey Sagal?),

When I wireless'ed my house (rather than drilling holes in the wall), my HTPC got a D-Link wireless card. It was a long procedure to get the damn thing working and then it would drop out when idle for a while (5-10 mins). So even though the machine is generally up for months at a time, I created a cron job to check if the wireless was up. If it wasn't, the script would bring it up. This is commonly known as a caretaker script, but it also doubles as kind of a startup script. It checks every 5 minutes and if iwconfig reports the correct network, it goes no further. If it has dropped out, it re-connects and checks/updates the ip address, sets the default route and sets the dns servers in resolv.conf.
When the machine gets rebooted (e.g. kernel update) I don't bother starting wireless because within 5 minutes cron will do it.

I found the in built scripts were a bit lacking, then there was the dropping out thing which they don't cater for, so this was my best option.

Regards

Mike

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LinHES 7.4
Australian Dragon
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Thanks Mike,
I did notice that it also disconnects when idle for a bit... was going to cross that bridge when I got it to start by itself.

I like the idea that you mentioned and will work on a script when I get a chance - I have used linux now for many years but have been able to dodge the requirement of writing bash or perl scripts - seems my run is coming to an end! Have been wanting to learn some perl scripting, so here is a nice simple problem for me to solve.

Al.

Hi Al. I wrote mine in bash, and can send it to you if you like. I'll make where you would change it very obvious.

Actually, I'll post it on the tips and tricks section and let you know.

Mike

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LinHES 7.4
Australian Dragon
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Hi Al,

Sorry this took so long, but I forgot about it. Just wrote it in hints and tips. Any feedback welcome.

Mike

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LinHES 7.4
Australian Dragon
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