I'm running Ubuntu on an HP dv5000t laptop and yesterday built the latest stock kernel from kernel.org (2.6.17.8) to include SMP support...

As Intel 3945abg wifi support isn't included with the kernel, I got the ipw3945 driver from sourceforge and installed it.

Everything seemed fine, and the driver does work, until I try to assign a WEP key with iwconfig (also just stalls with ubuntu's network manager.)

Here's the error:
# iwconfig eth1 key AA00CCBB99CCEEBBCC8822AAB3
Error for wireless request "Set Encode" (8B2A) :
SET failed on device eth1 ; Operation not supported.

I thought it might have something to do with the crypto support in the kernel, but I double checked line by line the required configuration (per intel's INSTALL) in autoconf.h ...

could this possibly have something to do with the way Ubuntu handles hotplug/udev?

Any help would be so greatly appreciated, as I'm at my wits end at this point.

I did see this in the ReadME file. Do you connect at all i.e. have u tried w/o encription?


3.8. Security Details
-----------------------------------------------

The driver currently supports WEP (64 and 128) as well as 802.1x, WPA,
and WPA2 with the use of wpa_supplicant. If you are using a newer
kernel with Wireless Extensions > 18, then you should use a newer
version of wpa_supplicant and the -Dext driver. If you are using an
older kernel, you should use wpa_supplicant and the -Dipw driver.

Users have reported problems using older (0.3.x) versions of
wpa_supplicant with various authentication modes (WPA PSK, etc.).
If you experience problems using wpa_supplicant, please upgrade to the
latest version of the supplicant (0.4.6 or newer).