[vox-tech] Automatic wifi settings on boot?

[David Rosenstrauch]

Bill Kendrick wrote:
> Is there an easy way to get a Linux laptop to connect to one of
> a number of wireless networks, based on which ESSID it sees?
> 
> Last time I checked (kernel has upgraded since), my wifi gets kind of
> finicky if it tries to connect to a WAP that isn't there.
> (e.g., if I leave my home WAP, which requires a key, in
> /etc/network/interfaces but then go boot up at Mishka's or Common Grounds,
> it seemed like I needed to alter 'interfaces' and then do a reboot to
> ever get it to work... just running 'sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart'
> didn't seem enough.)
> 
> Once upon a time, I tried providing various interface variations in
> /etc/network/interfaces (e.g., "eth1-home", "eth1-mishkas")
> but either did it wrong, or it didn't work. :)
> 
> Any tips or links to good howtos?  (This is on ubuntu 8.10 btw)
> 

I've been using the NetworkManager daemon (in conjunction with the 
knetworkmanager applet for KDE) for wifi in recent years.  (There's also 
a similar applet available for GNOME.)

The combo of the 2 of them basically gives you the kind of wifi 
functionality available in Windows - i.e., view available wireless 
networks, choose a network to connect to, have it prompt you for a key, 
have it remember the key (using KWallet) so that it will automatically 
connect to known networks in the future without you having to re-enter 
the key, etc.

NetworkManager can be a bit kludgey sometimes.  (The daemon crashes on 
me periodically.)  But it generally does the job pretty well.

IIRC, wicd is another applet that does similar, if (k)networkmanager 
doesn't cut it for you.

HTH,

DR