From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.0.1) Gecko/20021003 Description of problem: When a wireless card is started up, the script /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-wireless configures several settings for that card. Presumably, it reads them from a config file somewhere. If a wireless card is on a non-mobile machine, this is fine. However, for a laptop, this can pose problems. Consider the following scenario: I am on a wireless network at work where they use Wired-equivalent privacy (WEP) for encryption. In order to get the WEP key configured for the card, I have to put the key into some config file. I then go home where I have a wireless network using a different WEP key. (This is a very realistic scenario.) Because I have configured my workplace WEP key into config files, my wireless card comes up with my workplace WEP key, which then causes DHCP to fail to get an IP address. I then have to wait for DHCP to time out and for a login prompt to come up so that I can set my WEP key correctly and restart my network card. What I propose is some kind of database (a TAB-delimited file really) that maps SSIDs to WEP keys. Of course this file would need to have permissions of 0600, be owned by root, etc. Optionally, there could be some kind of utility to add entries to this file without editing it directly. I will be providing a sample patch file for the file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-wireless that reads info from a file /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/WEP.keys, and then configures the WEP key appropriately. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): 6.95-1 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Start up a laptop on a wireless network with a certain preconfigured WEP key. 2. Shut the laptop down 3. Go to another wireless network that uses a different WEP key. 4. Start up the laptop again. Actual Results: What you find is that when you start the laptop up on the second network, you need to manually intervene before you can ANY kind of network traffic over your wireless interface. This includes things like DHCP so that your machine can get IP address. Expected Results: Ideally, I should be able to go to the second network, and when I bring up the interface there, it the appropriate encryption key should be configured on the interface. Additional info:
Created attachment 90698 [details] Sample patch file for /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup-wireless This is a patch for /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/wireless, so that it will read WEP keys from a file that maps SSIDs to WEP keys, and configures the WEP key appropriately. Note that this patch file is more of a proof of concept more than anything else. There are several other things that could be done do accomplish this task. It also may need more error handling, etc. It also doesn't deal with the issue of how to get the WEP keys into the file in the first place.
Closing bugs on older, no longer supported, releases. Apologies for any lack of response. Realistically, with the advent of NetworkManager, further enhancements to this portion of initscripts will probably not be made.