Hey, I've recently changed my wireless network to use WPA2 personal PSK encryption and I have two computers on that network. One is a windows xp box, works fine. The other computer, a laptop running Backtrack 3, a modified version of SLAX has tons of problems.

Sometimes it will connect no problem. But most of the time, ill boot up and Kwlan has problems, sometimes it won't start WPA_supplicant, and when i try to start it it crashes. Other times, everything seems to be in order except i wont be able to go online. Kwlan will start up fine, wpa_supplicant starts fine, authentication goes fine but it wont let me go online. Usually i have to reboot to get it to work properly (i have no idea why this helps).

I run the distro off of a 8GB usb key, and just totally reformatted, reinstalled, etc, and im still having these problems. below is my current wpa_supplicant.conf... atleast the important part...

network={
scan_ssid=1
ssid="my_essid_is_here"
proto=WPA RSN
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
pairwise=CCMP TKIP
group=CCMP TKIP
psk=my_psk_is_here
}

when i start wpa_supplicant with "wpa_supplcant -Dwext -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -dd" i get the following messages in the console:

Scan timeout - try to get results
ioctl[SIOCGIWSCAN]: Resource temporarily unavailable
Scan results: -1
Failed to get scan results
Failed to get scan results - try scanning again
Setting scan request: 1 sec 0 usec
Authentication with 00:00:00:00:00:00 timed out.
CTRL_IFACE monitor send - hexdump(len=25): 2f 74 6d 70 2f 77 70 61 5f 63 74 72 6c 5f 31 31 35 33 34 2d 31 35 38 32 00

and when wpa_supplicant doesnt start, ill try to start it, but the following message comes up:
Kwlan was unable to start WPA_supplicant

can anyone give me any advice? i have no idea why it works sometimes but doesnt other times. and why does rebooting make it work sometimes? anyways, its working now, thats how im online, but id like to get it working permanently...
thanks in advance...

I have seen on my computer that wpa_supplicant is quite sensitive to the version of the drivers used for the card. So my first suggestion is update the driver to the latest version. What wireless card do you have ?

oh, my bad. forgot to mention the card. its an Intel Pro Wireless 3945ABG. if you know of a driver that works better with my card, other than the default wext one, lemme know! thanks!

If you have a kernel > 2.6.24 the drivers are already in the kernel drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi, if not you can download them from http://www.intellinuxwireless.org/.