Why is my wireless adapter not automatically activating on login?

Right click on the network manager icon and select edit connections. Go to the wireless tab. Select the name of the connection and select edit. At the top of the window that appears should have connect automatically select that box.

Hope that helps
Shane

Thanks for replying, but you are misunderstanding the problem. The wireless adapter itself is off, and it doesn't automatically turn on. I am well aware of how to automatically connect to a wifi network IF the wireless adapter itself turns on as expected on startup.

run:

gksudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces &

and add the line:

auto wlan4

You can check it IS wlan4 by running:

ifconfig

If it isn't wlan4, change the line I gave to suit. Then save the file and close gedit. The adapter should now come up automagically

If not, you can alays make a script:

#!/bin/sh
ifup wlan4

Which you can then add to the last rc level (so we know all drivers and whatnot are loaded)

Its a bit hacky but works, the intrfaces file is much more graceful.

@actionparsnip - Thanks for the tip, but the first one didn't work. Maybe I did it wrong; here's my edited /etc/network/interfaces:

auto lo
auto wlan4
iface lo inet loopback

As for the second suggestion, I don't understand what the "last rc level" is, let alone be able to add something to it :)

Have you tried disabling networkmanager and setting up connection manually?

if you do this the lines in your /etc/network/interfaces should look something like this:

auto wlan4
iface wlan4 inet dhcp

If you are using WPA for your wireless connection you will need to add these lines:

wpa-driver wext
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Then configure the wpa_supplicant.conf:

sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

and add these lines if you are using WPA-PSK:

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant

network={
 ssid="my wireless ssid"
 scan_ssid=1
 proto=WPA
 key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
 psk="my wpa passphrase"
}

For configuration for other types of encryption see:
http://hostap.epitest.fi/wpa_supplicant/
&
http://linux.die.net/man/5/wpa_supplicant.conf

@Al - Thank you, I would rather not have to disable Network-Manager... I've tried putting the lines in the interfaces file, but it didn't work, I assume because network manager was still enabled? Anyway, isn't there some way to get NetworkManager to start up the wlan4 itself? All it takes is for me to push the button on the keyboard and it is on.

the interfaces file superceeds the network manager app.

@actionparsnip,

I realized that I misunderstood the problem; it is not the network adapter that is off, it is wireless in general that is disabled. When I connect a usb wifi adapter, it still requires me to push the keyboard button for it to work (the notification applet says "wireless disabled" until I do). the internal uses wlan4 and iwlagn driver, the usb uses wlan3 and the zd1211rw driver.

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