$ lspci
….
02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Wireless WiFi Link 5100
….

Add the Debian Backports repository to /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://www.backports.org/debian lenny-backports main contrib non-free

Update the list of available packages and install the debian-backports-keyring package.

# apt-get update
# apt-get -t lenny-backports install debian-backports-keyring

As your system does not yet have the GnuPG archive key of the backports.org repository installed, you will be asked to confirm installation of a package from an untrusted repository. Enter Yes when prompted.

Install a 2.6.30 kernel image appropriate for your system, along with the firmware-iwlwifi and wireless-tools packages.

# apt-get update

# apt-get -t lenny-backports install linux-image-2.6.30-bpo.1-$(uname -r | sed 's,.*-,,g') firmware-iwlwifi wireless-tools

Restart your system and boot with the newly installed kernel, and the necessary kernel module should be automatically loaded.

As the new kernel was booting I noticed it made mention to that the microcode was out of date. To fix this problem simply download the new microcode from Intel Wireless WiFi Link Drivers for Linux.

wget -c http://intellinuxwireless.org/iwlwifi/downloads/iwlwifi-5000-ucode-8.24.2.12.tgz

Uncompress the microcode

tar xvf iwlwifi-5000-ucode-8.24.2.12.tgz

Now all we need to do is to change into the directory of where the microcode is and then copy it to /lib/firmware

# cd iwlwifi-5000-ucode-8.24.2.12/
# cp iwlwifi-5000-2.ucode /lib/firmware/

Restart your system and the newly added microcode will be loaded and used.

From : original link

By default, if a wireless network is secured by WPA or such, you have to save the info in your keyring manager, which is protected by a password.

Both session and keyring passwords must match for this to work, if they don’t match, you will be prompted to unlock the keyring.

1. Install libpam-keyring package :

$ sudo apt-get install libpam-keyring

2. Then tweak the GDM PAM (plugable authentication module) security

$ sudo gedit /etc/pam.d/gdm

Add the following line at the very end of that file, then save :

@include common-pamkeyring

3. Reboot and authenticate into your session, you should now be connected.

4. Optional : change your keyring password

$ /usr/lib/libpam-keyring/pam-keyring-tool -c