Barrapunto

Efectivamente, en debian se puede poner la configuración en /etc/network/interfaces

En mi caso tengo esta entrada:

iface eth1 inet dhcp
                wireless_essid UPVNET

y para levantar el interface:

# ifup eth1

¿Has probado esto?

System hang?
There is currently an issue with some laptops such that if the C3 processor power state is enabled, the system will hang shortly after initializing the IPW2100.

If you experience this, please send us an email letting us know the model and vendor information.

As a temporary work around you can disable the 'processor' module in ACPI, or appply the following patch to drivers/acpi/processor.c to disable C3 (your processor can then continue to transition into C2 and also use the thermal module for controlling the fan, etc.):

--- processor.c.orig Wed Mar 3 14:10:42 2004
+++ processor.c Thu Mar 4 17:56:02 2004 @@ -1598,6 +1598,11 @@
"No bus mastering arbitration control\n"));

/*
+ * Hack: Disable bus master controller to disable C3 power transitions
+ */
+ pr->flags.bm_control = 0;
+
+ /*
* Evalute the processor object. Note that it is common on SMP to
* have the first (boot) processor with a valid PBLK address while
* all others have a NULL address.