Where did nm-applet go?

[Gordon]

Last night I updated my repositories and applied available updates. This has left me with a crippled NetworkManager, so now I'm stuck with wicd which gives me the dreaded "Bad Password" when trying to connect to my wireless accesspoint (WPA TKIP). This has always worked with nm-applet.

I did some Googling and tried several different combinations that were hinted there. I even changed the accesspoint itself to use hex-key instead of passphrase. For some reason that doesn't bother my T91 running XP even the slightest, but wicd just keeps returning the bad Password message (there's a significant speed difference though).

On the side: I also did a manual setup of wpa_supplicant. I used the config file generated by wicd and when starting net.wlan0 it said psk (64) was too long. I discovered the hex-key value was surrounded by quotes, so that apparently makes it being considered a passphrase rather than a hex-key value. I removed the quotes and now it starts the device but prints a warning that it hasn't activated it. No further info whatsoever.

What am I missing (other than nm-applet obviously)?

[Gordon]

So I moved the machine to a place where I could wire it up and did a forced repository update. nm-applet magically reappeared and I installed it. No luck though, the wireless connection was broken and stays broken.

Now out of sheer luck I happen to own multiple generations of the same adapter. The one I originally had connected to my Sabayon was a RaLink 2500. I swapped it with a RaLink 2501 from a Windows machine that is perfectly happy with my 2500 and presto!

I'd still appreciate any insight towards the cause of all of this.