Hey there, Mac gurus. This one is more of an irritation than a problem, really, but I've noticed that MacOSX doesn't bother to connect to a wireless network until you log in. Actually, it may connect to the AP, but it doesn't seem to get an IP address. I'm not really sure how far it gets.

Any way to fix that? It's kind of irritating to be administering it remotely and having to reboot, and then needing to be physically in front of it in order to log in to get an IP.

Do you have location set or is it "Automatic"?

There seems to be no difference.

Well, I observed previously there's some difference in behavior when you have a location set, but I don't remember what. It was worth asking.

An important thing to elucidate is that I have the machine set up with multiple users and I don't have any of them automatically log in. It starts up to a GUI login screen. I think that if it automatically logged in it would connect to the network, but when it sits at the login prompt, it doesn't get that far.

Hm. Perhaps it's keeping the wi-fi card turned off until login in order to save power. Perhaps disabling the power saving features will fix that.

Just a stab in the dark.

I tested this here since I can see my servers DHCP logs to find out what it is doing.

1. Rebooted with network location set to Automatic, and System Preferences - Network - Airport set to "By default, join Automatic". DHCP assigned IP address around the time the login window was loading, SSH was enabled before any local user could log in.

2. Rebooted with location Automatic again, but "By default, join preferred networks" set. My wireless network was the only one in the list. DHCP assigned IP once again right when the login window appeared.

3. Restarted with a location I use for work with the proxies, again with "By default, join Automatic". IP was recieved at the same time, before a user logged in.

So I'm not sure exactly what might be causing your problem, unless somehow "Disconnect from wireless networks when I log out" is checked under System Preferences - Network - Airport - Options. Beyond that, my only suspicion would be something keychain related if it can't access the network password.