[gNewSense-users] Lemote: network interfaces down at startup

[Federico Bruni]

Hi all,

I have the following problem:

when I start the system network interfaces are all down (except for lo).
I'm not using any network manager.

I used rcconf to disable /etc/init.d/networking, in order to avoid waste
of time at startup (because interfaces are down so DHCP makes several
tries in vain).
This is my /etc/network/interfaces (I cut the eth0 section, which is now
commented out):

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid ESSIDNAME
wireless-channel 11
wireless-mode managed
wpa-driver wext
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

ifconfig has no output, so I do:

############################################################

address@hidden:~$ sudo -i
gnewsense:~# ifconfig wlan0 up
gnewsense:~# /etc/init.d/networking start
Configuring network interfaces...Error for wireless request "Set
Frequency" (8B04) :
    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Operation not supported.
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.1.1
Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:17:c4:4e:0f:24
Sending on   LPF/wlan0/00:17:c4:4e:0f:24
Sending on   Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 5
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
DHCPOFFER from 192.168.0.1
DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK from 192.168.0.1
bound to 192.168.0.6 -- renewal in 99872 seconds.
done.


################################################################

And wireless works fine.
I just wonder what this message really means:

Error for wireless request "Set Frequency" (8B04) :
    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Operation not supported.

What does it mean? I cannot set the wireless channel?

Two weird things:
* if /etc/init.d/networking is enabled at startup the above procedure
does not work, so I can't get wireless connection working
* if /etc/init.d/networking is disabled I get an error message at
startup: "Starting NFS common utilities: statd failed!"

Gnewsense 3, Lemote Yeeloong, XFCE (if matters)

Thanks in advance for your help,
Federico