Automating wifi setup

[Chris <debian@chrissearle.org>]

Debian unstable. 3com OfficeConnect 11g card together with CVS
ndiswrapper (need CVS for Version 2.0 card).

/etc/modules has ndiswrapper installed and the alias to wlan0 is set
up with ndiswrapper -m

Plugging the card in gives:

Oct 13 10:47:50 chris kernel: PCI: Enabling device 0000:07:00.0 (0000-> 0002)
Oct 13 10:47:50 chris kernel: ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:07:00.0[A] -> GSI 11 (level, low) -> IRQ 11
Oct 13 10:47:50 chris kernel: ndiswrapper: using irq 11
Oct 13 10:47:50 chris kernel: ndiswrapper (NdisAcquireSpinLock:909): Windows driver trying to use uninitialized lock dfd3d374, fixing it.
Oct 13 10:47:56 chris kernel: Loaded prism54 driver, version 1.2
Oct 13 10:47:58 chris pci.agent[17828]:      prism54: loaded successfully
Oct 13 10:47:58 chris kernel: wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:0e:6a:d2:cf: 24 using driver 3c154g72
Oct 13 10:47:58 chris kernel: wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP, WPA with TKIP, AES/CCMP

(Am interested why prism54 loads too - since ndiswrapper already is
controlling the card - is this a worry? Should I try and stop it?)

iwconfig shows no ESSID, or key.

In /etc/network/interfaces I have:

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
    wireless_essid MyESSID
    wireless_mode Managed
    wireless_key MyWEPKey

NB: No line "auto wlan0"

ifconfig wlan0 up brings the i/face up with these settings - no essid
- no key - and no IPv4.

Follow that with:

iwconfig wlan0 essid MyESSID
iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
iwconfig wlan0 key MyWEPKey
dhclient wlan0

Then all is great - lan is up and running - all keys are correctly in
use etc.

>From reading the README.Debian in the wireless tools package I thought
that this would be the effect of the wireless_ lines in interfaces?
That in ifconfig wlan0 up it would call iwconfig wlan0 ... for each of
them?

I've read around some - but as always - FAQs/URLs welcome :-)

Regards

-- 
Chris