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

[Larry Finger <Larry Finger lwfinger net>]

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.
              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