impossible to scan access points with linux?
 

OK, after much worthless googling on the idea of scanning for available access points in linux. The only answer I am able to come up with is that it is simply not possible to scan for access points under linux without some stupid X addon.

My problem is that I don't have X on this work laptop, don't need it. and iwlist eth1 scanning says that my Prism 2.5 card doesn't have 'scanning' capability. Well since that is completely false since every prism 2.5 card can in fact scan for access points or the card would have never been released. Does anybody have any idea what command can be done to simply show me the access points around me? Using the oronico driver and debian kernel 2.6.7

I am staying at a hotel where some jerk someplace has his wireless *something* set to ad-hoc. And thus my connection is associating to his laptop and not the actual hotel access point. (nor does he seem to ever seem turn the dumb thing off...) And I have no way of figuring out what the hotels access points mac address or essid is so I can specify which one I want without scanning for it. Is there any way in the world to do this on a computer without X?

Have you tried iwlist as root? I mean I'm running ndiswrapper and it can run iwlist so I can't imagine that a card with real linux support couldn't.

Yeah, I run it as root with no success.

Looking a little further into it now that i'm back home, people seem to be saying that it has been broken for the oronico drivers. And no plans to fix it thus far as it has been broken long before the days of 2.5/2.6 kernel timeframe.