device not up error

[Jeff Meden]

Guys,

I recently was attempting to create a bridge between 3 prism cards all 
running hostap on one machine.  The bridge creation works ok but if i 
dont assign addresses to the wlan interfaces this is the result.  By 
assigning addresses within the subnet, the configuration works but the 
spanning tree protocol quickly siezes up and stops the network again.  
Only by assigning arbitrary non-similar IPs to each interface will the 
setup work as expected.  The last bit with the spanning tree is probably 
my misconception so dont worry about it, but shouldn't the wlan 
interfaces be able to run without an IP assigned, especially if tied to 
a bridge?  Just wondering if theres something more going on here, its 
not a real issue because the setup works fine for me with some 'creative 
rigging'.  Thanks.

Jeff

---- heres a debug snippet, im running slackware with the 2.4.19 #7 SMP 
kernel and newest CVS'd driver (it did the same thing with the latest 
release driver as well) ----


Feb  6 17:16:44 tower2 kernel: wlan1: dropped received packet from 
non-associated STA 00:de:ad:be:ef:00 (type=0x02, subtype=0x00)
Feb  6 17:16:44 tower2 kernel: handle_ap_item - data frame
Feb  6 17:16:44 tower2 kernel: wlan1: prism2_send_mgmt - device is not 
UP - cannot send frame
Feb  6 17:16:45 tower2 kernel: wlan1: dropped received packet from 
non-associated STA 00:de:ad:be:ef:00 (type=0x02, subtype=0x00)
Feb  6 17:16:45 tower2 kernel: handle_ap_item - data frame
Feb  6 17:16:45 tower2 kernel: wlan1: prism2_send_mgmt - device is not 
UP - cannot send frame
Feb  6 17:16:45 tower2 kernel: wlan0: prism2_send_mgmt - device is not 
UP - cannot send frame
Feb  6 17:16:45 tower2 kernel: wlan0: 00:02:2d:3f:ef:c9 auth (alg=0 
trans#=1 stat=0 len=6 fc=00b0) ==> 0 (authOK)
Feb  6 17:16:46 tower2 kernel: wlan1: dropped received packet from 
non-associated STA 00:de:ad:be:ef:00 (type=0x02, subtype=0x00)
Feb  6 17:16:46 tower2 kernel: handle_ap_item - data frame
Feb  6 17:16:46 tower2 kernel: wlan1: prism2_send_mgmt - device is not 
UP - cannot send frame
Feb  6 17:17:01 tower2 kernel: wlan0: LinkStatus=2 (Disconnected)
Feb  6 17:17:01 tower2 kernel: wlan1: LinkStatus=2 (Disconnected)
Feb  6 17:17:01 tower2 kernel: wlan2: LinkStatus=2 (Disconnected)
Feb  6 17:17:11 tower2 kernel: wlan1: dropped received packet from 
non-associated STA 00:de:ad:be:ef:00 (type=0x02, subtype=0x00)
Feb  6 17:17:11 tower2 kernel: handle_ap_item - data frame
Feb  6 17:17:11 tower2 kernel: wlan1: prism2_send_mgmt - device is not 
UP - cannot send frame