The right way to turn up a wireless interface on boot?

English Network/Internet
1

The last step to get wifi working properly, I ended up adding these two lines to my /etc/init.d/boot.local file:

/bin/ip link set up dev wlan0
/sbin/ifup wlan0

Is there a more elegant way to accomplish this process automatically at boot?

Shuttle XS35
Realtek rtl8192se_pci
openSUSE 11.3 - kernel 2.6.34.7-0.3
KDE desktop

…

That said - for posterity, here is what it took to get wifi working on my system:

Prob 1) Realtek drivers won’t compile
Soln 1) download and install ‘kernel-source’ package.
Using Yast Installer, search on web for additional repositories - ‘kernel-source’. (thanks to Voodoo for pointing that out). Without that, I could not get the Realtek drivers to compile - MAKE would return an error about ‘target modules not found’.

Prob 2) wlan0 turns up, but radio doesn’t actually turn on.
Soln 2) Update shuttle bios update.
Discovered that my shuttle needed a bios update. Bios 1.08 only allowed the WiFi to work in either “OFF” or “AP Managed” mode. I needed it to be able to switch to “ALWAYS ON” at the bios level. Found this link:
[SOLVED] shuttle xs35 requires BIOS version 1.09 for wireless to work - Ubuntu Forums](http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1577104)
Contacted Shuttle support for a copy of the 1.09 bios [beta], and followed those instructions on the link and managed to successfully update the bios on my computer.

Prob 3) Wifi connects with the ethernet switch of my Netgear router, but won’t DHCP an address.
Soln 3) Set the interface to only use IPv4 DHCP.
The default option of DHCP v4 and v6 addresses seems to confuse my router.

Prob 4) Wifi is back to off after I reboot - regardless of how I set up Yast Network Interfaces.
Soln 4) I stopped using Yast Network Interfaces, and edited /etc/init.d/boot.local file as such:
/bin/ip link set up dev wlan0
/sbin/ifup wlan0

Now I am basically done using Yast Network Manager. If I open it again and tell it to save anything, it updates my wlan0 interface and I am out of commission (until I run those 2 lines in step 4). Unless there is a suggestion that resolves this - I will ignore that application and stick with the appropriate config files.

2

When one wants the network started on boot (that is from runlevel 3 upwards) one configures with YaST using “traditional with ifup”. That is regardless if it is cabled or wireless.
This is the normal way of doing this for computerroom systems (often called “servers”) and desktops. In short, systems that always connect to the same network in the same way.

When one wants to start the network at user login (and on behalf of that user) one uses network manager (which is speciale designed for this way of working that is rather normal for laptops. etc.).