Debian 5 server - auto-reconnect to wireless networks?

[chombee <chombee@lavabit.com>]

Hi,

I'm wondering how to get my Debian server to automatically reconnect to
my wireless network. The server is an OLPC XO-1 running Debian 5 Stable
via the DebXO distribution. It does not have a wired ethernet port, it
connects to the internet through my home wireless network. The wireless
router occasionally gets restarted, sometimes when I'm not home, and
this requires me to physically go to the laptop to manually reconnect
either by operating the network manager applet with the mouse or by
running a script that uses ifconfig, iwconfig and dhclient.

The way network manager behaves on Ubuntu and (I think) the testing and
unstable distributions of debian is to automatically scan for and
reconnect to wireless networks that it has connected to before. But in
Debian 5 stable it does not do this, and there is not an option to have
it do this. I've tried left- and right- clicking on the applet, going
into all the menus, opening the various gnome network management
dialogs, nothing. I'm quite convinced that the option is not there. Is
there a way to enable network manager's automatically connecting
behaviour?

Getting network manager to work as it does elsewhere would be the best,
its behaviour of automatically scanning for and reconnecting to any
wireless network that it has connected to in the past is very
convenient. But failing that I'd settle for getting it to automatically
reconnect to my home wireless network by any means. I may even look into
writing a script for cron to run every few minutes. The script would
have to do nothing if the laptop is already connected to a wireless
network, and try to connect to a network if it's not, I guess some
combination of the ifconfig, iwconfig and dhclient commands might
achieve this.

Any help?

Thanks