Comment 5 for bug 127065

this is a driver bug. It 1. forgets about the "do not auto-associate" module configuration once you set the essid to ANY and 2. even doesn't really associate to a new essid if you are already associated; 3. it doesn't send association events to user-space when you set essid to an essid its currently associated with.

Evaluation:
network manager starts and explicitly unsets any essid to ANY/OFF in order to reset wifi state in preparation of a connection attempt. Because of 1. the driver reassociates immediately (and you see the LED on), *before* network-manager can start wpasupplicant. However, because of 3. wpa supplicant never retrieves an association ack from the driver and in turn network-manager never gets this event either (as it relies on wpa for these kind of events). So network-manager doesn't even try to obtain an IP because there is no hint that the wifi interface is ready for that operation.

Fix:
the fixed ipw3945 module source for gutsy is available from: https://code.launchpad.net/~asac/intellinuxwireless/ipw3945.asac

If you can test it, please confirm that this fixes the issue for you.

Thanks,

 - Alexander