wpa_supplicant brings the interface down

[Dan Williams]

On Wed, 2009-06-17 at 15:13 +0530, Paresh Sawant wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm running wpa_supplicant (wpa_supplicant-0.5.11) on Linux FC9
> (kernel 2.6.28.1). 
> 
> I've ath5k module loaded running on 5xxx series of Atheros 802.11
> wireless LAN card.
> 
> I'm able to run the wpa_supplicant successfully, but when i terminate
> it (either ctrl-c or terminate cmd from wpa_cli), the interface(wlan0)
> goes down. why this happens?

Because the supplicant is the controller of the wireless device; the
device is pretty much useless when the supplicant is no longer running.
To make it useful again, you'd need to run the supplicant to set up the
connection.

> Another issue  is when i try to bring the interface up using "ifconfig
> wlan0 up", I get following error -
> 
> "SIOCSIFFLAGS: Resource temporarily unavailable".
> 
> I need to reboot the machine to get this resolved. Any idea what's
> wrong?

That's most likely a driver problem then, you should be able to at least
'up' the interface.  Can you bring the interface up without ever having
run wpa_supplicant?  Or does this just happen after the supplicant has
quit?

Dan