Ubuntu 7.10 can't keep wireless up

[fouldragon at aol.com]

I've writing a fresh install of Ubuntu 7.10 (the only major change 
being the nVidia drivers, because scaling on LCDs makes my eyes bleed).

The system uses an 802.11g card which can be supported by the rt61 
wireless drivers.  It connects to a network running WPA-PSK security 
with a Linksys WRT54G (normal firmware, guys, stop salivating).

The network doesn't connect reliably on boot, and when it does connect, 
it tends to only hold for 30 minutes or less.  Sometimes as little as 3 
or 4 minutes.  This makes it hard to get updates, among other things.

The most reliable scenario for the connection seems to be:

-Fresh boot
-Discover that it's not connected
-Open Network Manager, find that while "roaming mode" is off, it's 
forgotten the WPA key.  It does that sometimes, but I'm not sure why.
-Reenter WPA key.
-Enjoy connection somewhat.

When the connection is bad, dmesg reports endless loops of connecting, 
then drops a few seconds later, with "RX deauthenticated (reason=15)".  
I suspect the deauthentications may start when some change in the 
security may be missed by some part of the system (wpasupplicant?  The 
driver?  who knows?)

Network Manager is not good at things like "actually disconnecting 
everything" when you tell it to turn off networking.  It will still 
announce it's connected to the network in iwconfig.

The info I could find said "try this other wpasupplicant package", 
which didn't help.

I suppose it might work if I removed WPA, but would YOU? :D
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