Wireless card won't connect right away

Question

I have a netgear wg311 wireless card on my Debian machine. I have it connected using wpa_supplicant.

When I type this.

wpa_supplicant -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -iwlan0 -Dwext

I get this

TRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS Trying to associate with 68:7f:74:47:50:96 (SSID='BigGiraffe' freq=2462 MHz) Associated with 68:7f:74:47:50:96 WPA: Key negotiation completed with 68:7f:74:47:50:96 [PTK=CCMP GTK=TKIP] CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to 68:7f:74:47:50:96 completed (auth) [id=0 id_str=] –

but the connection doesn't work for 5-10 minutes. Anyone know what might be causing this?

/etc/network/interfaces

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
wpa-driver wext
wpa-key-mgmt WPA-PSK
wpa-proto WPA
wpa-ssid BigGiraffe
iface default inet dhcp

auto wlan0

error message on startup

wpa_supplicant: wpa-roam can only be used with the "manual" inet METHOD, run parts /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wpa_supplicant exited with return code 1.

and it trys to DHCP DISCOVER 255.255.255.255 at 6 different ports.

Answer 1

As last quote says, you have "dhcp", when you should have "manual" for wlan0.

Try changing

iface wlan0 inet dhcp

to

iface wlan0 inet manual

in /etc/network/interfaces.

Another choice is to use manager for network connections, for example Gnome's Network Manager or WICD.