changed router wireless essid, /etc/network/interfaces no longer works!
 

Hi there

I changed the essid on my router yesterday, and I'm finding that I can no longer connect to my wireless network after the equiavlent essid update to /etc/network/interfaces.

For the record, the format of the wireless section looks like:

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid <essid>
wireless-key <key in HEX>
wireless-channel 11

as mentioned, the only thing that got changed was the essid. Now everytime the computer boots, the wireless card always picks up the neighbour's network (not that's a bad thing :p), which seem to indicate that the config is somehow wrong (?!).

I have found a temporary workround, but it's kind of weird, since I can't really explain why it work :p

I'm having to remove all of the wireless prefix in the wireless section in /etc/network/interfaces. i.e.

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
essid <essid>
key <key in HEX>
channel 11

I then have to run the following from the command line:

sudo iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed
sudo iwconfig wlan0 key open <key in HEX>
sudo iwconfig wlan0 essid <essid>
sudo ifconfig wlan0 up
sudo ifup wlan0


what annoys me is the fact that the settings on the command line is exactly the same as in the interfaces file. The fact that a small change such as an essid update could totally render the wireless network unusable for me freaks me out.

Not to mention that I spent over two hours trying to get it back up in Linux and only 5 minutes on the same machine when in Windows (dual boot).

Anyways, if someone could shed some light as to why the interfaces file no longer works after this change, I'd be really grateful.

System info:
OS: Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake)
Kernel: 2.6.15-27-386
wireless card: Linksys WPC54G
ndiswrapper ver: 1.27
router setting: essid-broadcast disabled, WEP 64bit, no MAC address filtering.

operator current state: annoyed and puzzled :p