[Debian-eeepc-devel] 901 wifi doesn't work until interface is up

[Glenn Saberton]

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Eric Cooper wrote:
> I find it annoying that the rt2860 wifi won't associate, take an
> ESSID, or display a MAC address until you bring the interface up with
> ifconfig.  That's unlike the behavior of every other wifi device I've
> used under Linux. 

This has been an annoying issue for wireless drivers in the past.
Drivers have been doing their own thing in regard to how they handle
ioctls through wireless extensions since it came out pretty much. There
was never really any direction on how they should behave, and this has
resulted in different behaviour between drivers. The new mac80211
drivers are finally giving us a consistent set of drivers and behaviors,
but unfortunately, the rt8260 chip is not yet supported by the rt2x00
driver. See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=403983 and
the linked lkml thread for some background.


Is there a fix, or a place to file a bug report?
> 

Whilst it is annoying, I don't feel filing a bug report will achieve
much. We can pass it upstream to Ralink for a wishlist though if you do
decide to. Unfortunately, I think we are going to have to struggle with
the ralink code for a little while until the rt2x00 driver comes up to
speed. Thankfully, there has been some movement in the last months in
getting the chip supported.

Cheers

Glenn
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