Arch Linux

Had the same problem with a Texas Instruments ACX 111 wireless card and wireless settings managed through /etd/rc.conf.

Same problem with RaLink RT2561/RT61 chipset on GIGABYTE GN-WP01GS card.

Up to the level i understand the "problem", i experience it myself since last update to 2.6.26 with my intel pro wireless 3945 card, using the iwl3945/mac80211 module combo.

Extra tip: the network script *does* apply the "mode", "essid" (things you set with iwconfig), etc, but nothing regarding ip/netmask (things you set with ifconfig) so the network remains down.(at least for me)

Extra tip2: if you manually set ip/netmask using ifconfig and the bring up the wireless interface, and then run again the network script , it reports no errors and seems to "complete" its tasks, but your connectivity is poor (at least for ad-hoc that i tested) *and* dmesg brings a lot of messages like :

..............
wlan0: beacon TSF higher than local TSF - IBSS merge with BSSID 26:00:9d:76:70:bb
wlan0: Configured IBSS beacon template
phy2: Adding new IBSS station 00:16:b6:a1:0e:6e (dev=wlan0)
wlan0: Configured IBSS beacon template
phy2: Adding new IBSS station 00:16:b6:a1:0e:6e (dev=wlan0)
wlan0: Configured IBSS beacon template
..............

Same problem here. Madwifi and Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5212/AR5213 Multiprotocol MAC/baseband processor (rev 01)

Related thread: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=408692#p408692

For me (Atheros+madwifi) it appear, like iwgetid don't return correct access point id until requested interface is up.
After commenting out this lines in /etc/rc.d/network

#bssid=`iwgetid $1 -ra`
#if [[ "$bssid" = "00:00:00:00:00:00" ]]; then
# printhl "Could not associate $1 - try increasing WIRELESS_TIMEOUT and check network is WEP or has no security"
# return 1
#fi

it start working again.
The same behaviour described in http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=408692#p408692

I would like to add, that this happened to me also using ndiswrapper + windows XP driver v11.(intel pro wireless 3945ABG)

Is this still a problem?

So I've had a problem with this for a while, but haven't had physical access to my PC that runs Arch. Anyways, upon examining the contents of the following lines in /etc/rc.d/network:

/usr/sbin/iwconfig $iwcfg
[[ -z "$WIRELESS_TIMEOUT" ]] && WIRELESS_TIMEOUT=2
sleep $WIRELESS_TIMEOUT

bssid=`iwgetid $1 -ra`
if [[ "$bssid" = "00:00:00:00:00:00" ]]; then
printhl "Could not associate $1 - try increasing WIRELESS_TIMEOUT and check network is WEP or has no security"
return 1
fi

It appears that these lines configure the device, but don't bring it up. They then test to see if it has associated with an access point, which by my understanding cannot happen unless the device has been brought up. I inserted a line that says "/sbin/ifconfig ${1} up" after the "/usr/sbin/iwconfig" line, and now the script works for me.

Same problem for me with an rt61 pci wireless card. 'iwgetid wlan0 -ra' always returned '00:00:00:00:00:00' until you bring up the interface with 'ifconfig wlan0 <ip>' that is done after iwgetid.
So i worked around in this way:

bssid=`iwgetid $1 -ra`
bssid="00:1B:11:3F:66:6A" # force the NWID
if [[ "$bssid" = "00:00:00:00:00:00" ]]; then
printhl "Could not associate $1 - try increasing WIRELESS_TIMEOUT and check network is WEP or has no security"
return 1
fi

I am not sure if the commenters had the same bug as the original submitter, if so please see:

http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/13299

for a patch to fix this issue.

Thanks.

What's the status on this? Is it working now?