NetworkManager and wpa

["Martin Monroe" <willismonroe gmail com>]

Just as a preface: I think NetworkManager is great and use it almost exclusively to connect to wired or wireless networks on my Ubuntu Edgy Laptop.

Here's one case where it doesn't work and I hope the information I provide can help in solving the problem:

I am unable to connect to my university's wifi network through the NetworkManager dialogs.  The icon whirls and then 60s are reached and it disconnects for taking too long.  I had a look at syslog as it was doing this but to my untrained eye saw nothing of interest.

I can however connect with just straight wpa_supplicant and dhclient.  My school (thankfully) provided a wpa_supplicant.conf file for Linux users to install with the instructions "After this it should all just work".

the file is as follows:
/////////////////////////////////////////
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=0

eapol_version=1
ap_scan=1
fast_reauth=1

network={
  ssid="eduroam"
  
  key_mgmt=WPA-EAP
  eap=TTLS
  
  ca_cert="/etc/ssl/certs/soas-root-ca.pem"
  anonymous_identity="@soas.ac.uk"
  identity="
username soas ac uk"
  password="password"
  phase2="auth=PAP"
  
  priority=5
  
}

///////////////////////////////

then by running the command line:
wpa_supplicant -Dwext -ieth1 -K -dd -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -B

and waiting a few seconds and then running dhclient, I'm connected to the network.

I've tried all manner of options in NetworkManager and none seem to work.

I thought it might have something to do with the phase2 authentication (the line being: "phase2="auth=PAP"") as I saw no-where to set that in NM.

Anyway I hope this case might help improve NetworkManager, 

Best of luck,
-M. Willis Monroe