ifup fails but iwconfig and dhclient works?

[pizzapie_linuxanchovies <embedded@verizon.net>]

Hello,

Sorry in advance if this is a bit long--I tried to keep it very clear.

Having some trouble establishing my wireless connection.  I recently upgraded Sarge to Etch.  Now using the stock 2.6.18 686 kernel.  No problems with the main part of the upgrade.

However, I like to use the latest rt2570 driver from http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com for my wireless access point (a Linksys WUSB54Gv4).  This always worked fine under Sarge.

Under Etch, I did the make, make install, and modprobe of the driver without problems.

But here's the problem:

$sudo ifup rausb0
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
SET failed on device rausb0 ; Network is down.
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
SET failed on device rausb0 ; Network is down.
Error for wireless request "Set Frequency" (8B04) :
SET failed on device rausb0 ; Network is down.
Error for wireless request "Set ESSID" (8B1A) :
SET failed on device rausb0 ; Network is down.

Whenever this happens, I fail to get a DHCP offer.  I believe these messages are coming from a component of Debian rather from driver code written by the serialmonkey group, because I grep'ed for these messages in all the *.c source files of the serialmonkey driver, and didn't find them.  Then I realized these errors were occurring in response to this stanza of my /etc/network/interfaces:

auto rausb0
iface rausb0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid (deleted)
wireless-channel 2
wireless-key (deleted)
wireless-mode Managed

So instead, I tried issuing the iwconfig commands manually:
$ sudo iwconfig rausb0 essid (deleted)
$ sudo iwconfig rausb0 mode Managed
$ sudo iwconfig rausb0 channel 2
$ sudo iwconfig rausb0 key (deleted)

Got no errors from these iwconfig commands, so then I tried:

$ sudo dhclient rausb0

Now I finally got my DHCP offer!

So why does ifup fail but doing all the steps "manually" succeeds?  I can't believe the order of the iwconfig commands matters?  Could it be something to do with the environment created by the "sudo" command?  I just can't fathom what changed between Sarge and Etch to give me this problem.

I've been hitting my head against the wall for a few days on this wireless thing.  Thanks in advance for any ideas!