Hidden WPA wireless?

I'm running Fedora 10 XFCE since yesterday and I can't get my wireless connection working properly. I've tried with the internal driver and madwifi. Our wireless is hidden and uses WPA personal. I select "Connect to Hidden Wireless Network" in the nm-applet and enter SSID and password of our network. It then tries to connect, but then asks me for authentication again, but I can't choose WPA in the dialog, only WEP and others.

Then I installed wicd and finally got a connection with that (so the hardware's ok). But it doesn't connect automatically on startup. I have to open the GUI, select "Add Hidden Network" and enter the name of our network again. That's very annoying. I checked "Automatically connect" after I got a connection. The GUI shows a nameless wireless network at startup (which seems to be ours - when it does connect I have two connected connections), and tries to connect to it. But that doesn't work, probably because the name is missing.

I think, I would most like the combination of NetworkManager and madwifi to work. I did some googling and removed the ifcfg-wlan0 files like suggested, but no change.

Any ideas? I don't want to go back to Linpus, because it breaks so easily every time I try to install or configure something (e. g. tried installing f-spot and my keyboard was dead ).

 

I was having the problem where Network Manager repeatedly asks for authentication for a while, but (if I remember rightly) an update sorted it out. If you haven't updated from the basic Fedora installation yet, you might try that.

 

Maybe this is specific to hidden wireless? What is hidden wireless, anyway? Is this SSID not broadcasted? In that case just switch it on! Not broadcasting SSID doesn't add security, modern scanners find non-broadcasted nets, anyway.
I switched to Fedora 10 yesterday and it all worked out-of-the-box. The only thing I did is rename the ifcfg-wlan0 file. I'm not sure, though if it was necessary. I hit the following bug and this didn't finish the whole wireless connect. But I misinterpreted it the first time and just renamed the file as I remembered that from your posting. There's one bug in the applet: don't check the option that allows other users to use it. You'll get a crippled error message that the necessary add-on is missing and all the connection details you just entered are gone. Save without that and it should work. If it doesn't work the first time, check your passphrase again and again. It's easy to mistype such long ones.
I didn't test the automatic connect yesterday as I had it on all the time. But today after I started the netbook and had logged in it just connected automatically right-away. (I'm using wpa2-personal.)

 

I did all the updates after installing (over wired network), so that can't be the problem. As for broadcasting the SSID, I'll have to wait till my network admin comes home. I had a Nokia internet tablet before and used the AAO with the somewhat crippled Linpus and both worked out-of-box with our network. Now I have a flow-blown distribution and it doesn't, that's frustrating. I found a thread where the poster opened his network, connected and then hid the SSID again. Connecting worked from then on. I'll try that later today.

 

It's happening to my sister's AAO now. I don't know what she did though from my understanding, the AAO just don't accept WPA now because whenever I try the option to connect to a hidden wireless network, the wifi led blinks and it seems like it is trying to connect but it repeatedly asks for authentication. When I try to check the passphrase, I realized that there is no WPA in the dropdown menu, only WEP variations. Her AAO is fully updated (everything, mind you) as well as mine but I could connect no problem. Hers, however cannot even detect the router and our router has its SSID broadcasted. I've tried to update it again this morning but only the Flas Player 10 appeared. Wonder what's wrong.