I recently wrote about my iwl3945 problems - I usually
have to try 20-50 times before I can use a wep-encrypted access point.
Once the link goes up - no more problems. But getting the first
connection takes time.
Yesterday something weird happened.
I run the same iwconfig command over and over. Then a wild guess:
Perhaps the driver or linux is clever enough to see that I
just set the same essid and key as last time, and optimize the
operation away completely? I have no idea if this actually happens,
but I changed the essid (added a few garbage characters)
in order to force a difference. I was about to run iwconfig again
with the correct essid, when I noticed that the link was up!
An "iwconfig" without parameters showed that the PC indeed
had associated to the usual access point, and the essid was wrong one
indeed.
I then ran "dhclient", got an IP address, and used my home network
for a few hours. No problems, but the essid was wrong all the time.
I thought this ought to be impossible - so I can only guess that
the essid is stored in several places - one place used by "iwconfig"
to display the current essid, and somewhere else used to program
the radio. And the latter place is not necessarily updated when
"iwconfig essid <something>" is run - and therefore the link
worked anyway. This could possibly explain why things fail
so much - perhaps the essid is set correctly only occationally?
Kernel: 2.6.25-rc3, SMP 64-bit. Other sw from debian testing.
Helge Hafting
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