Fixing wireless start in Ubuntu Gutsy (NOT SOLVED)
Since changing to Ubunty Gutsy, I’ve been having trouble with my wireless: nothing serious, just that the wireless doesn’t start automatically when I log in. Instead I need to click on the networking applet in the top panel in Gnome, choose “connect to other network” and then enter a network ESSID.
This is not a huge problem, but it is annoying. If I know the network name (as I do at work and at home), I enter the name and password. If I am in an area where I don’t know the network, I need to enter a dummy name in order to start up the wireless to get a list of available network names.
What I’d prefer to have is something that takes advantage of the ability of Network manager to use profiles (so I don’t need to enter passwords for networks I use a lot) and that turns on the wireless scanning when I am in areas where I don’t know the available ESSIDs.
A solution for what looks like the problem is found “here”: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=576238 (see comment #9—an error in the file name in the original posting has been corrected). This recommends opening the file /etc/udev/rules.d/85-ifupdown.rules and commenting out the line
ACTION=="add", RUN+="/sbin/start-stop-daemon --start --background --pidfile /var/run/network/bogus --startas /sbin/ifup -- --allow auto $env{INTERFACE}"
(Apparently if you use a PCMCIA wireless card, you will lose the ability to hot plug the card in and out.)
Changing this setting didn’t do any harm to my system, but it didn’t do any good either.
So the search continues…
Comment [2]
George (Sat May 30, 2009 (12:11:25)) [PermLink]: Even though you might have solved the problem in the meantime I’ll give You a hint.
In your /etc/network/interfaces add the line
“pre-up ifconfig XXX down”
right after the line
“iface XXX inet [...]”
whereby you have to replace “XXX” by the name of your wireless adapther.At the end of the wireless configuration lines you add the line
“pre-up ifconfig XXX up”Hope that helps.
dan (Tue Jun 2, 2009 (08:37:58)) [PermLink]: Thanks George, this is useful to know, though, while I didn’t fix the problem, later versions of Ubuntu (it’s three along now) did not have the same problem.
