I have a Cisco WAP4410N access point that I want to use as a client to connect to a WPA2 wireless network (for WLAN service monitoring purposes).

Supposedly this access point supports a "Wireless Client/Repeater" mode that allows to do this. The Repeater function is optional (I have that box unchecked so that nobody can connect to this access point wirelessly). I have verified through SSH that the access point gets configured as a client and not as a Master. But it never associates to the SSID I ask it to. This is what iwconfig shows:

ath04     IEEE 802.11ng  ESSID:"myownssid"
          Mode:Managed  Channel:0  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power:14 dBm   Sensitivity=1/3
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/94  Signal level=161/162  Noise level=161/161
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Although I've never done this from the command line, I suppose I could use wpa_supplicant or wpa_client to associate it, but I don't know how to do that without editing configuration files and the filesystem is readonly. Besides, I would have to run those commands manually after every reboot.

I'd like to know how to do this the Cisco way, if possible. If not, any trick to make this work would be useful.

Edit: This is with the latest firmware, 2.0.4.2. And I found that not all of the filesystem is readonly, since /var and /tmp are mounted with type ramfs.