Using any Debian box as a wireless access point

I just lost an hour trying to configure a Thinkpad T41 as a wireless access point. Most of that time was due to problems with the built-in wlan interface and a kernel recompile to use a prism54-based PCMCIA card. This is mostly a post to remind myself what to do, and how to do it on Debian. It’s not the first time I create an access point, but I do it so infrequently that I always forget something. (more…)