Hello, all: I just installed a new testing system (Lenovo ThinkPad L512, recently Wooted for $500), using the xfce installation option. It uses wicd instead of network-manager by default, so I decided to try it. My wired connection worked immediately, but at first wireless wasn't even turned on. During installation, I had been prompted for a couple of non-free drivers that I did not have available and so I installed them after the fact (firmware-iwlwifi and firmware-realtek). Still wireless was not turned on. For whatever reason (perhaps because wireless was not functional when I first booted up), /etc/wicd/manager-settings. conf had nothing in the "wireless_interface = " line, so I added "wlan0" and rebooted; wireless was now active.
Now the real fun begins. I try to connect to my wireless network, which uses WPA Personal (PSK) + AES (so Tomato on my Linksys WRT54GL tells me). So, in the Wicd Network Manager, I chose WPA 1/2 (Passphrase) for my network and entered the correct passphrase (although Wicd is calling it a "Shared Key"). When I try to connect, I get a "Connection Failed: Bad Password" error. Much Googling reveals that this is not a new problem but a persistent one, years old in fact, and incredibly still not fixed. Apparently the culprit is wpa_supplicant which wicd uses as a backend. As a last resort, before dumping wicd and installing network-manager (which I have never had any troubles with, which I know is not the universal experience with it) I tried entering my passphrase (which has numbers and upper and lower case letters in it) using WPA 1/2 Hex ([0-9/A-F]). IT WORKED!!!! Ridiculous, I know, but I am now connected to my wireless network. I report this in hopes that others might not have to waste all the time I just wasted getting it to work. Now I'm just hoping that wicd can handle VPN, which network-manager does flawlessly. Cheers Patrick -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/cajvvksptxjq+q56yvhvrbgwz98eu6y4kan0eemj9fgey2bs...@mail.gmail.com