I'm looking to develope a script that will allow me to switch the configurations on my wireless card between wireless networks, namely home and work. The trouble is configuration changes made in ifconfig of the interface, eth1, do not seem to respect the configurations made in the iwconfig file of the same interface. I cannot completely configure the wireless card in ifconfig as there's no field for the encryption key and changes made to the iwconfig only seems to confuse the system, FC 3.

what is the relationship between ifconfig and iwconfig and how could I get the system to get the configuration information solely from iwconfig?

Hi.

iwconfig only deals with the wireless elements of a wireless card: the ESSID, WEP keys, etc. All the normal attributes of the network card (IP address, subnet mask etc) are assigned through ifconfig. The two utilities don't overlap, and both are required to use the card (unless you're using dhclient, in which case you won't have to use ifconfig directly).

Dave

[thanks for the quick reply; I have a follow question]

my bad. its actually ifcfg-eth1, not ifconfig, that's giving me the trouble. ifcfg-eth1 has a limited number of fields to configure in reguards to wireless (no encryption key field). I want to set the configuations through iwconfig but settings in the ifcfg-eth1 file seem to confuse things. if I clear all configurations regarding wireless (ex: SSID) will that allow the configurations in iwconfig to set the wireless card?

Hi again.

According to this page (it claims to be the manual for ifcfg):
http://server1.belchfire.net/protect...n/man5/ifcfg.5
there is a field for encryption keys.

The last program to run will take priority, so if you run iwconfig after running ifcfg (with no wireless options set or otherwise), then iwconfig should work fine. The only problem I can see (and I can't check this as my laptop's not here), is that you might not be able to change things like ESSID or encryption keys on an active card. If ifcfg activates the card and then you run iwconfig, you might run into problems. As I said, though I don't know.

You could avoid all this by just using ifconfig (or dhclient) and iwconfig directly in your script.

Dave