Wireless connection problems after testing upgrade

[Sam Varghese <sam@gnubies.com>]

I run Debian testing on a Lenovo Thinkpad E531 which I bought in June. I have
been running Debian for the last 14 years, and have used the testing stream on
several machines for the last seven or eight years. 

I have never used network-manager to manage my wireless connection, depending
instead on my own customised interfaces file. I do not use DHCP.

About three weeks back, after a dist-upgrade, my wireless connection refused to
come up. I checked everything possible - routes, dns etc. There was nothing
wrong with any of these parameters..

I reinstalled the wireless drivers (the card is a BCM43228), and recreated the
wpa_supplicant.conf file, all to no avail.

I went through the debian-user lists for September but could find nothing
similar to what I had encountered. The only similar complaint was this [1] but
the user appears to be utilising network-manager already.

To fix my problem, I had to bite the bullet and install network-manager. My
wireless connection works now. But I would rather uninstall it and go back to what I
was using.

Having read what is available, it looks like this is due to a problem between
systemd and wpa-supplicant; an older version of wpa-supplicant seems to work
well with systemd, not the latest.

But this conclusion could be wrong.

I have checked the debian-user lists for both September and October before
posting and cannot find anyone with a problem similar to mine. Any comments
would be welcome. Please copy me in as I am not subscribed to the list.

Thanks,
Sam

[1] https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2014/09/msg00414.html