Killing wpa_supplicant and wi-fi interface down problem

[Dan Williams]

On Mon, 2008-11-17 at 16:31 +0530, Raghavendra wrote:
> Hi All,
>  
>   Whenever I use 'killall wpa_supplicant' command, it puts wi-fi
> interface down? 
> Can any one tell me what is the reason behind this behaviour? 
> can we avoid this?

What's the specific problem with this behavior?  When the supplicant is
told to terminate, the association with the AP is almost certainly
terminated or otherwise not able to be maintained.  Thus, there's
nothing you can do with the previous setup of the card anyway.
Furthermore, setting the card 'down' ensures that the driver refuses
traffic (which it couldn't transmit anyway) and you won't get lost
frames or other odd behavior (though the driver should be protecting
against that, but sometimes drivers suck).

dan