Greetings, I have a personal server set up, but in order to establish a wireless connection or start a few essential services I have to log in on the gui. Since I can't get an internet connection until I login I can't even initialize the processes remotely, which is a bit of a problem.

Is there a script or a method to initialize wireless without logging in? Perhaps the best route would be to find a way to automatically log in?

Please advise.
-SS

You'll probably have to write a script that runs at boot time. Essentially the script will have to configure the card and then request and IP address from the AP (or assign a static one if that is what you use). Most of this stuff can be done with the iwconfig, ifconfig and ifup commands.

Once you've got a script, you've just got to set it up to run at boot time.

There's a reasonably simple way to do this if you're not confident writing a script or prefer a frontend to wpa_supplicant and the other networking tools: you can remove network manager and instead use wicd to manage the wireless connection. Set it up the first time after logging into your desktop environment. Choose the option to connect automatically. Wicd runs as a daemon, the gui tools are not needed once the configuration is done, so on subsequent boots it will connect automatically before log-in.

It's an excellent tool for wireless but has the limitation that it can't manage more than one interface at the same time (I think this is being worked on), so if you need the wired interface up as well you can simply leave a blank in the space where you specify the name of the wired interface (eth0 or eth1 typically). Configure the wired interface in the file /etc/networking/interfaces in the traditional manner.

Another one that can run as a daemon is WiFi-Wiz

If you only ever connect wirelessly to one network it's certainly more efficient to configure wpa_supplicant manually and have it run at boot.