Comment 5 for bug 722185

I am having the same problem with the p54usb driver and isl3886 firmware from linux-firmware-nonfree. It fails the AP scan, and then goes into an associate 1, 2, 3, timed out, direct probe 1, 2, 3 timed out loop. It doesn't connect with the current mainline ppa kernel either.

Strangely, I built a kernel from the stable 2.6.38 release today and that will successfully connect and works without issues. I don't believe anything changed between the releases that causes this to work, because in debian experimental, 2.6.38-rc7 works without issues as well (using the experimental wpasupplicant 0.7.3). So it would appear to be an issue with some ubuntu patch, although that would mean the mainline kernel should work, right? So perhaps something with the kernel configuration, but I haven't managed to track down the issue.

I could include the working kernel config, but I'm not sure it would help, since I disabled everything not required for my system so it would compile quickly. I will include a syslog excerpt with wpasupplicant set to debug level 3 though.