Birch Street Computing -

Using WPA supplicant with a ipw2200 in kubuntu dapper, with kernel 2.6.15

Ok, I hope google likes the title and sub-title enough to get it's attention. :-) It sure took me long enough to figure this out. When I upgraded to kubuntu dapper from breezy, wpa_supplicant stopped working, the error I got was "ioctl[IPW_IOCTL_WPA_SUPPLICANT]: Operation not supported".

As it turns out kernels 2.6.15 (and above?) don't want the "-D ipw" parameter, it should instead be "-D wext". I had to change this in /etc/default/wpasupplicant.

It also removed the wpasupplicant init script, that might have been by design though. (That whole silly Network Manager thing, why do I need a gui for something that should run all the time). Either way, I'm back running wirelessly again.