This is a very serious bug that is very difficult to explain. I could not connect to a wpa encrypted network on feisty because in the network manager under the wireless connection settings only wep was available. The icon appeared as two monitors, and I could not select a wifi network from there. I had to enter manual configuration by right clicking the icon or entering the system menu. Only wep was availble as a security method. I knew from earlier that wpa was a part of feisty. After sometime I stumbled across a guide that was to enable wpa support in older versions of ubuntu. Here it is:
sudo apt-get install wpasupplicant
sudo apt-get install network-manager-gnome network-manager
sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces
Comment out everything other than “lo” entries in that file and save the file
Create a file called /etc/default/wpasupplicant, add entry ENABLED=0 and save the file
sudo touch /etc/default/wpasupplicant
Reboot your system or use the following command
sudo /etc/init.d/dbus restart
The packages were already installed but the interfaces file thing was new to me. After commenting out anything that did not have to do with lo and following the rest steps it worked. Instead of the network manager icon appearing as two monitors, it appeared as wifi bars. Although I could select networks directly from the applet, I could not connect to wpa through the applet. Manual configuration remained the same as well with only wep as a choice. A work around is clicking the applet icon and connecting to "another wireless network". I typed in the ssid, and select wpa personal as the encrytion and it worked perfectly.
This seems to be purely a bug in the network manager applet, and for someone like me who's not a novice it proved to be very difficult. I hoped this was helpful to anyone who had the same problem as I did.
Hi,
which wifi chipset/driver are you using?
When you keep interfaces file unmodified, maybe you can switch to wireless network through the applet?
- Alexander