# Wireless setup and SYNCDHCP



## ronaldlees (Aug 21, 2013)

Hi.

For years I have been using a special wireless startup script.  It doesn't bother me, and I never considered it an inconvenience.  Recently, a friend indicated that FreeBSD might be interesting, and I set about to create a completely setup-transparent WiFi access netbook computer.  Finally, I think I'm there (Windows, move over).  The wpa_gui works great, although I hated to go to ports and install sudo for it.  Any other ideas for wpa_gui?

The only thing that caused an issue, was when I transmuted my old startup script to the loader.conf, rc.conf, et al files.  It concerned the functionality of the following lines in rc.conf,

```
wlans_ndis0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP"
```
Seemingly, it worked well enough, except that I found it was necessary to run dhclient manually after the gdm login.  A friend (without my inclinations) would be seriously put off by anything manual, so I thought about a "bandaid" script.  (No ...no...no...no ) Finally, I found everything works just automagically if I use:

```
wlans_ndis0="wlan0"
ifconfig wlan0="WPA SYNCDHCP"
```
Apparently, the dhclient task does not continue otherwise?  Anyway, this cost me a bit of messing around, so I thought it'd be useful for others ...


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## wblock@ (Aug 21, 2013)

By default, the startup scripts do not wait for dhclient(8) to finish, they just continue while it runs in the background.  Some network interfaces or DHCP servers are slow, and don't get a lease in time for the startup scripts that need it.

SYNCDHCP forces the startup to wait until dhclient(8) returns.  Personally, I think it should be the default, and always use it.


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## ronaldlees (Aug 21, 2013)

wblock@ said:
			
		

> By default, the startup scripts do not wait for dhclient(8) to finish, they just continue while it runs in the background.  Some network interfaces or DHCP servers are slow, and don't get a lease in time for the startup scripts that need it.
> 
> SYNCDHCP forces the startup to wait until dhclient(8) returns.  Personally, I think it should be the default, and always use it.



Thanks!

BTW, I see a typo on my last line.  Should be 


```
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA SYNCDHCP"
```


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