Hello, I am having a small difficulty with Debian kernel 2.6.8-2-6 I could get it to work on my old 2.4 kernel with the current settings.. I have the wireless settings correct and i can get the connection up by changing the essid to the correct one, but when it boots, the essid is changed back to the default Cisco essid which is tsunami now my /etc/network/interfaces file says
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth1
iface eth1 inet dhcp
wireless-essid (took out essid but it is correct to get the network up)
wireless-key (took out wep key but it is correct to get the network up)

The wep key is correct in iwconfig but for some reason at boot the essid stays as
tsunami
i cannot figure out why..
i am running:
IBM Thinkpad T40 Laptop
Debian kernel-image-2.6.8-2-686
Cisco 350 Series Wireless Adapter
Thanks

Check /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts. There could be something in there triggering it.

If you are running with /proc support, either you have a file echoing the name 'tsunami' into the ESSID dir, or you are connecting to another box in ad hoc mode.To echo a string into the ESSID, I'd do it from /etc/init.d/local, like this:

echo "string" > /proc/drivers/aironet/eth1/ESSID

Check the path first though -- I may have mixed the subdiretory order. This is my preferred method when using Aironet Cisco cards because there is a substantial amount of data available that isn't reported by the wireless tools.

--John

ok the second suggestion given seems to work except for one thing..there is no /proc/drivers/aironet/eth1/ESSID but rather /proc/driver/aironet/eth1/SSID and i tried echoing to that and it works but it does not change the essid which was my intent..is there a way to change the ESSID in this way? thanks for the help

ive realized the reason why the essid is what it is..is because it is the default on the cisco card..and it is somehow not getting written in the /etc/network/interfaces and it stopped working when i switched kernels..so any suggestions keeping that in mind?

I have solved my problem, just not in the way that I expected..all i had to do was add a line to /etc/init.d...i chose /etc/init.d/networking being the most relevant "iwconfig eth1 essid (MY ESSID)"