Unsupported Authenication Modes

[Charles Whittington <chw scs co uk>]

I have NM working nicely for our home networks, thanks to all involved. 
Now, I am trying to set up a laptop running ubuntu for easy use by my 
daughter who is at Edinburgh (UK) University. (She is reading 
Comparative Religion and not Computer Science!) Unfortunately I am not 
anywhere near Edinburgh so I want to get as close to the solution as 
possible, by diligent research, before I get to see the network. Anyway 
I hate trial&error methods - they take far too much time! She will 
require, therefore, four different networks: home wireless, uni wired 
(not allowed to use wireless in halls), uni wireless, & wireless 
hotspots. EUCS website suggests that a wpa-supplicant file for their 
network should look something like this:

QUOTE

ap_scan=2
network={
   ssid="central-wpa"
   auth_alg=OPEN
   key_mgmt=WPA_EAP
   proto=WPA
   pairwise=TKIP
   group=TKIP
   eap=PEAP
   identity="username"
   password="password"
   phase1="peapver=0"
   phase2="auth=MSCHAPV2"
   eapol_flags=3
UNQUOTE


Apart from the typo (I think it should be WPA-EAP not WPA_EAP), this 
looks as if it requires two-phase
authentication which, from reading all the stuff I can find here and in 
ubuntu etc, looks as if it may not be supported by NM.

1. Am I correct in concluding that this mode of wpa-supplicant is not 
supported by NM?
2. Am I correct in concluding that manual configuration of 
wpa-supplicant.conf is ignored by NM?
3. If so, is it possible to use NM in conjunction with an ifup/down 
script fired from a suitable applet?
4. Would it be a good idea/possible to have an option in NM to use a 
custom script for this type of situation?

Very grateful for any comments and/or ideas ...

Charles Whittington