Need to be able to remote-reboot, and have my wifi active BEFORE desktop login. nm
 

Debian Lenny
Wifidriver: zd1211rw
Gnome 2.22.3

I use gdm and when I installed it set up network manager which i like, but i need it to activate and connect to my psk wireless network BEFORE someone logs in. It uses gnome-keyring to store the password, but i have to unlock it every time, and thats AFTER logging in AT LOCALMACHINE.

I'm thinking I should figure out how to get network-manager to start before logging in, and if it does already, but just waits for keyring, to have it automatically parse a 400 file with the passphrase. Is this possible?


So I can remotely reboot and have it already connected to the internet so i can log back in again.

Thanks :)

Configure wireless networking to use if-{up,down} scripts instead of using network manager.

Look in the ifcfg-wlan0 file. You can change the start mode there to start on boot. You can also add your WPA-PSK key to this file. ( If debian is similar to the other distro's ). See man ifcfg for details. If your system doesn't use the ifcfg-wlan0 file to configure wpa_supplicant.conf on the fly, then edit your own /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf file, adding the PSK key for a network with your ESSID.
See the readme and example wpa_supplicant.conf files supplied with the wpa_supplicant package.