I have just installed Debian 3.1 on my PC. I have a TI ACX100 based wireless card and am using Driverloader to get it to work, and it does very nicely......but I have to use iwconfig to configure the card each time I boot up. I have amended /etc/network/interfaces to:

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
wireless_essid XXXXXX
wireless_mode managed
wireless_key xxxxxxxxxxxxx
wireless_keymode open

I have also tried putting wireless_nick xxxxxx after wireless_essid. All that I get is the following output:

sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
Listening on LPF/eth0/00:03:2f:1b:6b:93
Sending on LPF/eth0/00:03:2f:1b:6b:93
Sending on Socket/fallback/fallback-net
DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPREQUEST on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 20
DHCPDISCOVER on eth0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 1
No DHCPOFFERS received.

In desperation I also tried using 'iwconfig eth0 ...' in place of the 'wireless-...' commands in /etc/network/interfaces. In this case I get an error that '/etc/network/interfaces' can't be read.

I am obviously doing something wrong, but am not knowledgeable enough to tell what. Please help!!

Thanks,

Iain

I had the same result until I added the channel number and name to my interfaces file. It looks like you need to add the name and wireless channel you are using and change the underscores with dashes. Here is my interfaces entry:

neuromancer:/home/hank# cat /etc/network/interfaces
# This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary network interface
# auto eth0
# iface eth0 inet dhcp
# name Ethernet LAN card

# The wireless network interface Netgear WG-311T
auto ath0
iface ath0 inet dhcp
name ath0
wireless-essid ********
wireless-key **************************
wireless-channel 10

My card is listed as ath0 because I am using madwifi drivers.

I hope this helps.

Thanks - that did the trick. Now it works well when I boot up - it just won't deregister when I shutdown. The system waits for eth0 to become available, but it never does so it just waits. Do I need something to stop the interface so that Driverloader can unregister itself?

Thanks again,

Iain

That I don't know. I haven't heard of that problem yet. Hopefully, someone on here will read this and have the answer. Glad your wireless is up and running!