Re: Wireless requires roaming to be turned off and back on before connecting

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Sun, 2008-07-27 at 13:04 -0500, Larry Finger wrote:
> Dan Williams wrote:
> > 
> > AFAIK you can't actually run that command at all unless you're root,
> > since it has the potential to interrupt traffic either way.
> 
>  From the man page for iwlist:
> 
>         scan[ning]
>                Give  the  list  of  Access  Points and Ad-Hoc cells in range, 
> and optionally a whole bunch of information about them (ESSID, Quality, 
> Frequency, Mode...). The type of information returned depends on what the card 
>          supports.
>                Triggering  scanning  is  a privileged operation (root only) and 
> normal users can only read left-over scan results. By default, the way scanning 
> is done (the scope of the scan) is dependant on the card and card 
> settings.

Right; we're both a bit wrong.  Only root can actually make the card
scan (either active or passive).  A normal user can only read cached
scan results from a previous scan, but cannot actually initiate a scan
at all.

Dan

>                This command takes optional arguments, however most drivers will 
> ignore those. The option essid is used to specify a scan on a specific ESSID so 
> you will also see hidden networks with that name in addition to the 
>    regular scan results.  The option last does not trigger a scan and reads 
> left-over scan results.
> 
> This is the way that openSUSE works. I would not expect it to be different in 
> other distros.
> 
> Larry
>