One point of clarification: In inserting those scripts into the terminal, should each one be in a separate terminal or can the second script be placed in the original terminal after the first script has been executed? I can't see where it would make a difference but maybe it does. Thanks.

I apologize for bugging everyone with this...but it is frustrating. Now I am having trouble getting online at all. Before I was at least able to get on with "disable wireless" and then going back to "enable wireless," but now even that is precarious. I had to make several tries to finally get back on. The bad password is still embedded in this system. What needs to be done to correct this?

Some have a switch. Others let you login and tell it to reboot from the http server interface. But most need to be unplugged IME. If you have a few power strips with switches, you can add a switch of sorts by dedicating one of those power strips to the device.

For iffy configs you can sometimes get away with purging the package entirely.

# dpkg --purge --force-all <package>
(in debian)

The apt-get remove method keeps the configs, which it sounds like you're needing to purge. Make sure you have the package downloaded and archived (/var/cache/apt/archives/ in debian) so you can reinstall it without needing a network to download it.

# apt-get install --reinstall <package>
(or)
# dpkg -i /var/cache/apt/archives/<package .deb name>

Otherwise you might need some code digging (or googling) to find out where things might be and might be duplicated. So you can manually purge them or modify them to work in expected ways. Or don't use that package and do things the old (mostly CLI) way(s). Bundle that up in a bash script to save future keystrokes and fat finger mishaps. Which is how I do it, but mostly to make migration between distros and versions of distros less needy.

This is good but a bit technical for this old geezer. What is the CLI for getting online without the network package? And how do you create a simplified bash script? I seem to remember that from the old DOS days! I was never good at DOS but knew just enough to do what I needed. But inserting a command line script and then creating a bash file would be neat. Would that in any way jeopardize my ability to get online at public hot spots, etc.?

Here are my wireless and ethernet cards. I thought this might provide some useful information on solving this problem:

00:19.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation 82567LM Gigabit Network Connection [8086:10f5] (rev 03)
03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 5100 AGN [Shiloh] Network Connection [8086:4237]

Does that help at all?

Have you considered renaming your wireless network?

How do you mean? Just creating a replacement for "Yuhan" or actually creating a different account with new password, etc.? How would I go about doing that? Would that necessitate making changes on my router or just locally on my laptop? The reason I ask that is because my family has also has wireless units configured with the existing router settings. I would hate to have go through and change all of them. If it's just me, however, that makes a change on my laptop, that would be fine. I still think somehow I'm going to have to get rid of those bum passwords. Even if a new name were to work temporarily, my sense is that old password would rear its head at some point.

Well, I was thinking changing the wireless network name on your router. But that would mean changing the setups on all your other devices. But with a new network name, the password issue on your system should go away, as the network name would no longer match your old configurations.

I can certainly understand not wanting to disrupt the family. I have the same issue at my house.

is there a package available for xubuntu called ceni? you can look for it in the software center.

I looked in the software center. Apparently it is not available. What is it?

its a console (command line) network configuration tool. I've used it in the past on debian-based systems when removing network-manager. It automates a lot of the headaches of configuring a network from the command-line.

I'm installing a test setup of xubuntu. I'm going to try purging network manager and reinstalling a different network managment tool.

Unfortunantely I havne't been able to duplicate your password issues.

Thanks for going to this trouble! I appreciate your efforts. Is there a way just to delete the Network Manager and start over, as if from scratch? If that were possible it could possibly eliminate the headaches of creating a renamed manager.

I'm actually looking at that option now. The problem is that if you remove and purge network-manager you will not have a connection, even wired, to the internet, so installing a new manager will be difficult. There are ways to do this from the commandline, but I'll be honest, I'm a little shakey on them as its been a longggg time since I set up a connection that way.

I've just about got a working procedure to replace network-manager with wicd, without loseing your network connection. I want to test it on real hardware tonight so hopefully tomorrow I'll have something you can try.

You would be using bash (or dash) to create a sh script (think .bat file). Which basically contains all of the iwconfig options to set the wireless parameters (man iwconfig). In debian there's a /etc/network/interfaces file to define network devices. If defined there network-manager ignores that device. And you can set pre-up and post-up things to run scripts, like your wireless bash script. And post-up to set your DNS to non-ISP ones that actually work (/etc/resolv.conf).

Basically all the old dos things from bitd. But /? is -h or --help. And .bat is .sh and with headers (#! /bin/sh). And type is cat, dir is ls, move is mv, copy is cp, and other things.