Wireless intel 3945. driver says "network is down"

Question

hey guys,
i upgraded my system 2 days ago and my wireless driver has gone mad - it says "the killer switch is on", "network is down", etc.
the upgrade involved an update to the kernel headers, new versions of gcc, glibc, binutils, and xorg-server.
i've been using iwlwifi-3945-ucode all along, so i don't understand why this has happened.
the driver seems to load fine - its listed in lsmod and dmesg, but it thinks my wireless switch is off (which is not).
i re-installed iwlwifi-3945-ucode and kernel26, but it didn't help.
any ideas?
thanks,
shane

Answer 1

And this is while you're not running any network script/deamon/program ?? What are the errors it gives you?
Well, the first time I get the following message, second time all is well. Ive always set the network this way on all kernel versions and wlan cards, and there is nothing wrong with the wireless router.
[root@archlinux gunnar]# iwconfig wlan0 essid <essid> key <passwd>
[root@archlinux gunnar]# dhcpcd wlan0
err, wlan0: timed out
warn, wlan0: using IPV4LL address 169.254.208.57
Indeed. It's also the case for rt2x00, sadly. Lots of people wonder why...
Yes, that is certainly a strange regression. I would think including the better working code makes more sense than patching in some randomly stamped "stable" code. And the driver for the 3945 chip is definately not stable, but perhaps the other chips supported by this driver work much better. And if the "bleeding edge" version of the driver worked better means that we do not have to wait long for these problems to be ironed out. I thought the even minor kernel versions meant "stable", while the odd numbers meant "lots of new stuff has been added, lets test it".