I've been installing wireless networking support on a base image and have ran into something really strange.  Look closely at the output of ifconfig and iwconfig.  I have a valid dhcp assigned ip from my router thats pingable but the wireless adapter is unassociated!! It worked yesterday without this weirdness when I did the exact same steps, but today its doing something different.  Something weird is going on with wpa_supplicant.  I'm documenting every step that I take so its reproducible in case I get run over by a bus but I might have missed documenting a step last night ;)This is what I did to install Realterk wireless usb support:apt-get install firmware-realtek iw crda wireless-regdb wireless-tools wpasupplicantThis is the output of lsub after I plug in the adapter:Bus 001 Device 012: ID 0bda:8178 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8192CU 802.11n WLAN AdapterAnd dmseg:[ 1096.600195] usb 1-1.3: new high-speed USB device number 13 using dwc_otg[ 1096.701786] usb 1-1.3: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=8178[ 1096.704348] usb 1-1.3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3[ 1096.706830] usb 1-1.3: Product: 802.11n WLAN Adapter[ 1096.709223] usb 1-1.3: Manufacturer: Realtek[ 1096.711575] usb 1-1.3: SerialNumber: 00e04c000001And ifconfig:wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:ef:11:00:bf          inet addr:192.168.10.110  Bcast:192.168.10.255  Mask:255.255.255.0          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:57 overruns:0 frame:0          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:1 overruns:0 carrier:0          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000          RX bytes:1598 (1.5 KiB)  TX bytes:2224 (2.1 KiB)And iwconfig:wlan0     unassociated  Nickname:<WIFI@REALTEK>          Mode:Managed  Frequency=2.417 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated          Sensitivity:0/0          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off          Encryption key:off          Power Management:off          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0Interfaces:auto loiface lo inet loopbackauto eth0iface eth0 inet dhcpallow-hotplug wlan0iface wlan0 inet dhcpwpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant_wlan0.confmetric 10allow-hotplug wlan1iface wlan0 inet dhcpwpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant_wlan1.confmetric 20wpa_supplicant_wlan0:ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdevcountry=CAupdate_config=1network={        ssid=myssid        psk=mypassword        key_mgmt=WPA-PSK}
How can I have a pingable IP but the wireess interface is unassociated?
linux;networking;wifi