Fwd: Wireless Extensions and "no such device" output from stardard ioctl calls

[Jouni Malinen]

On Fri, Jun 15, 2007 at 10:33:31AM -0700, Joe wrote:

> Good morning, I am having some issues using wpa_supplicant and I am
> not sure if the problem lies with the wireless extensions or the
> supplicant itself (or even the driver itself), so if anyone could help
> me clarify where the problem may lie it would be helpful.

> First of all, I get the following errors on startup:
> 
> ioctl[SIOCGIFFLAGS]: No such device
> Initializing interface 'wl0' conf

Which driver are you using? Are you sure it is using interface name wl0?
Please send 'ifconfig -a' and 'iwconfig' output.

>  What do the "no such device" errors mean and is it being generated by
> the extensions or by wpa_supplicant?

It means that the kernel reported that the device 'wl0' does not exist.
The error code comes from kernel and the text here from the C library.

> Does this mean that the driver itself looks like it is absent, hence,
> "no such device" or is it that specific ioctl that has questionable
> support? Some of these are not wireless specific such as SIOCGIFFLAGS
> so I do not know what to think.

Normally, this would indicate that the selected network interface does
not exist. If the driver is completely broken, it could be returning
that error code for ioctl calls, but more likely, the interface just
does not exist with that name.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA