Debian Etch Install

[James Wiggs <wiggs wiggs net>]

 Folks,

   I've just upgraded my Toshiba 1750 laptop to Debian Etch from a 
recent install of Sarge.  I have a D-Link AirPlus XtremeG DWl-G650
adapter which I have previously had working fine with the madwifi
driver which I installed under Sarge from the www.backports.org
repository.  While I eventually got a combination of wpasupplicant
and /etc/network/interfaces to the point where I could reliably
connect to my home network, I wanted the ability to roam, and more
importantly, I wanted a non-technical user to be able to do so.

   I added unstable to my sources.list file, pinned etch at 600 and
sid at 550, and did an install of network-manager.  That install
seemed to go fine, but NetworkManager absolutely refuses to work on
this box.  I get the following error messages when I run it in a
terminal window:

-----begin text-----
NetworkManager: <information>   starting...
NetworkManager: <information>   Updating allowed wireless network lists.
NetworkManager: <WARNING>        nm_dbus_get_networks_cb ():
nm-dbus-nmi.c:522 (nm_dbus_get_networks_cb): error received:
org.freedesktop.NetworkManagerInfo.NoNetworks - There are no wireless
networks stored..
------end text------

   If I manually start wpasupplicant with the original configuration,
I can still get a connection to the router, a LinkSys WRT54GS that is
configured with WPA-PSK for the local network.  But NetworkManager
just sits there; the applet icon in the panel has a little red circle
and slash, and the hover tooltip says: "No network connection" even
when the wireless card is up and working.  The /usr/share/doc README
doesn't provide any insight, and I can't find anything relevant with
Google.  So, can someone explain what causes this error and what I can
do about it?  Or even, has anyone successfully installed it and gotten
it working on Debian etch?

many thanks,
Jim Wiggs