Since last night I've been fighting a bizarre issue with my wlan.

It's a D-Link DWL-G520 card ,revision B, and I believe it has an atheros chipset since I actually used atheros drivers for a while in windows when I was trying to fix an issue there. I've heard some people say atheros cards are assigned the 'ath0' designation, but mine is getting 'eth0'. However, that's not the issue, really... or, I think it isn't... I'm just giving background.

Keep in mind my linux experience right now is about a week's worth of reading about about 3 days' worth of working with it

Anyway, it's a hard drive install of knoppix 4.0.2 (debian), and as a CD it worked only when wep encryption was disabled. I might have gotten it working with encryption if I'd really tried, but I didn't want to type in the key every time I booted, and persistant image wasn't working, so I never really tried at all.

The issue now, however is as such:

If encryption is disabled, it works right with NO configuration at all. Everything auto-set, no problems.

If, after connecting, I enable encrytpion then set the key in iwconfig, it works brilliantly that way as well.

If I boot with encryption enabled at the router, during boot it says something about eth0 connection failing. If I then turn off encrytpion at the router and run iwconfig to remove the key and start it up, it works fine.

If, however, I boot with encryption enabled, it fails at boot (as outlined above). Then, if I run iwconfig to set the key (just as outlined above when I set the key and it works), I get a HARD LOCK - as in, mouse freezes, no key combos work, nothing - I have to physically reboot to get it to do anything.

So... erm... what the hay? Is there something I'm missing here?