Automatic Wireless WPA Authentication

[David Abrahams]

Frank Hahn <fhahnisfake at yahoo.com.invalid> writes:

> I have a Gateway 7510GX laptop with one of the dreaded Broadcom wireless 
> cards. This is using Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 and the ndiswrapper driver for the 
> network card.
>
> I have been able to get the card to connect and authenticate with 
> wpa_supplicant but I have to do it manually.
>
> If I type at the command line:
>
> # wpa_supplicant -D ndiswrapper -i eth1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -d
>
> I can watch the software authenticate to my Linksys WRT54G wireless router. 
> I can then type:
>
> # dhclient eth1
>
> and then receive an IP address, DNS IP's, etc.
>
> If I use NetworkManager to try and automate this, it never authenticates 
> with the router. I can watch syslog and it will try several times and then 
> give up. I have everything in /etc/network/interface commented out except 
> for the loopback device.

In my experience, that doesn't actually make any difference, despite
the many references to it you can find on the web.

> I am not sure where to install a default wpa_supplicant.conf
> file. The documentation that gets installed does not make it
> clear. Reading through /etc/wpa_supplicant/ifupdown.sh does not
> help.
>
> In /proc/net/ndiswrapper/ there is a directory called wlan0 but in
> /etc/modprobe.d/ndiswrapper I have the statement:
>
> alias eth1 ndiswrapper
>
> Any further ideas on where to head from here?

I've been having similar troubles.  I think you should read this
thread:
http://news.gmane.org/find-root.php?message_id=%3cuzme7trk7.fsf%40boost%2dconsulting.com%3e
And then you should post a "me too" on that list.  IMO there's
something seriously broken in NM or wpa_supplicant and it might help
if the developers realized it's a widespread problem.

-- 
Dave Abrahams
Boost Consulting
www.boost-consulting.com