Hints for wpa_supplicant and ndiswrapper on Debian (Sarge)

If you have installed both wpa_supplicant and ndiswrapper and have managed to manually start them from a terminal, then will probably want them to start after the next reboot automatically.

Here is what you need to do:

1) Make sure that you entered the correct options for wpa_supplicant in /etc/default/wpasupplicant. Specifically, you should set "ENALBE=1" and insert a line similar to

OPTIONS="-i wlan0 -D ndiswrapper -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

where "wlan0" is the name that you used in /etc/network/interfaces to identify your card. Speaking of which:
2) Insert a line in /etc/network/interfaces similar to

iface wlan0 inet dhcp

and also don't forget to enalbe the autmatic startup of the interface by adding it to the line starting with "auto", e.g.

auto lo wlan0

3) Now all you have todo is tell Debian to start the wpa_supplicant at boot-time which is done by adding it to the default runlevel like this:

update-rc.d wpasupplicant defaults

(Note the missing underscore "_" here. If this does not work, then try it with "wpa_supplicant".) If you don't have the update-rc.d command on your system then you will most likely have a file called /etc/runlevel.conf. Check this page for more info: http://debiananwenderhandbuch.de/init.html