"Static" wireless interface and runlevel 3

[Geoffrey Leach]

On 01/25/2009 09:02:16 PM, Todd Zullinger wrote:
> Geoffrey Leach wrote:
> > I have a system whose network interface is via a USB wireless to a
> > router.
> >
> > From what I've read, NetworkManager is deemed unsuitable for this
> > task.  Correct?
> 
> IMO, not entirely correct.  If your wireless network uses WPA, then I
> think the old network service requires some fiddling, perhaps more
> than it takes to make NetworkManager bring up your connection
> automatically without a user logging in.  (This was the case the last
> time I looked at the network service scripts, which was a few 
> releases
> ago now.  If that's changed, then please ignore me. :)
> 
> Now, if you're not using WPA, then system-config-network and the
> network service is probably sufficient and simpler than
> NetworkManager.
> 
> Perhaps if you provide more details about what sort of wireless 
> you're
> trying to setup and which tools you're using / have used so far
> someone can be of more help.
> 
> Personally, I try to avoid mixing system-config-network and NM.  I do
> have NetworkManager starting my WPA wireless connection prior to 
> login
> on my laptop.  I generally boot into runlevel 5, so I haven't tested
> it in runlevel 3, but I do think it would work there.

Hmmm ... well, at least its possible!

No desire to mix NM and network. Whichever I can get to work wins!

I'm using WPA.

The network interface is via USB wireless to a Netgear router.

iwconfig gives the same info as on the other end of the link.

The system config is the Netgear router that talks to a satellite modem 
on one side and has both a wired and wireless connection to a laptop. 
The system I'm attempting to connect to has just a wireless (USB) 
connection. The wired (eth0) will be talking to another device.

Everything works as expected once I log in at runlevel 5.

Various experiments with the network service all fail at some point 
because no IP address could be acquired. I tried a hard-wired IP in 
ifcfg-wlan0 to no avail. I'm running dnsmasq, which has no trouble 
discovering the router. Presumably the problem is one of getting things 
done in the right order, but I've tried all the combinations I can 
think of - restarting network, restarting dnsmasq, ... to no avail.