Ubuntu

how to obtain wireless chipset driver

Asked by jim-g on 2007-09-10

My USB Wireless unit does not appear support in Unbutu and Airlink 101 advises the following about a driver for it:

"you may be able to find linux drivers directly from the chipset manufacturer. The awll5025 uses a Ralink RT2671 chipset. "

I have a 801.11(b) card in the machine I use when on the road but at home use the USB for mimo speed, (g) level and WPA-FSK encryption which is not availalbe on the (b) verssion.

Unutu sees the (g) link on air but I can't get into it as only the (b) card is recognized by the software which as you know doesn't do higher level of security than WEP.

Being rather new in this area I'd appreciate a steer in the right direction to resolve my issue so Unbutu can be used.

Question information

Language:: English Edit question

Status:: Answered

For:: Ubuntu Edit question

Assignee:: No assignee Edit question

Last query:: 2007-09-10

Last reply:: 2007-10-14

Link existing bug

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jim-g (jimg-hoa) said on 2007-09-10:

#1

Addt'l info from Ralink here.... but the file download is past my experience level. Any thoughts?

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jim-g (jimg-hoa) said on 2007-09-10:

#2

Ooops sorry, here's the link: http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Linux.html

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jim-g (jimg-hoa) said on 2007-09-10:

#3

Now I have downloaded the chipset files still in need to be compiled to get the driver. Has anyone done this or can advise how to get there from here to obtain the driver?

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Flavius (fcopaciu-deactivatedaccount) said on 2007-09-10:

#4

Hi,

maybe the following page might help you: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Device/LinksysWUSB54GC

It is for a Linksys WUSB54GC adapter, but as far as I can tell it uses the same chipset.

Best regards,
Flavius

Revision history for this message

Bill Z (billz) said on 2007-10-14:

#5

I was able to successfully do this today, using SerialMonkey's version 1.4.0 of the rt73 drivers.

The driver is here: http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/rt73-cvs-daily.tar.gz -O /usr/src/rt73-cvs-daily.tar.gz

... and the instructions reasonably close to what I did are here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=400236

I didn't perform the blacklisting steps, but it's possible I should have. Before I got it working, the normal failure mode was that plugging the device in at all through my machine into a tight kernel loop and subsequent hang. It's possible it was one of the blacklisted modules doing that.

Some more differences (and lessons) from those instructions:

1) There's no need to put the rt73 sources into /usr/src. Doesn't hurt, though, and it's as good a place as any for them. You do have to be root, though, to install the binary.
2) You do have to install the sources for your particular kernel. I just grabbed them via Synaptic. You don't have to rebuild the kernel, though.
3) Unlike with the Linksys, you don't have to add your own USB device registration (and that's not even necessary for the Linksys any more) to any source file. The Airlink101 comes up as Ralink device 148f:2573, and that's already in the list. An 'lsusb' will confirm this.
4) For configuration, I fairly quickly abandoned the Network GUI for wireless setup. I think it's a fairly sloppy front-end for the command-line tools, anyway. On one site, I was told that you actually had to type the word 'restricted' in the password box before your password. Phooey on that, says me. The manual steps, which I may put into rcS.d, were:

iwconfig wlan0 essid MyNetworkID
iwconfig wlan0 key restricted MyWEPPasscode
iwconfig wlan0 channel 6
dhclient3 wlan0

(you may have to cycle ifup/ifdown wlan0 so as not to interfere with the automatic process)

It's also haven't put the same information into /etc/network/interfaces file, as those instructions indicate. That might easier and more effective than putting the commands into the main system startup scripts. The dhclient3 step might be skipped if you can get the configs in before the system has given up on DHCP during the device autodetect.

Note also that I'm using WEP with my 802.11g, while the rest of the known universe has moved onto WPA.

Hope this helps,
Bill Z.

I was able to successfully do this today, using SerialMonkey's version 1.4.0 of the rt73 drivers.

The driver is here: http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/rt73-cvs-daily.tar.gz -O /usr/src/rt73-cvs-daily.tar.gz

... and the instructions reasonably close to what I did are here:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=400236

I didn't perform the blacklisting steps, but it's possible I should have. Before I got it working, the normal failure mode was that plugging the device in at all through my machine into a tight kernel loop and subsequent hang. It's possible it was one of the blacklisted modules doing that.

Some more  differences (and lessons) from those instructions:

1) There's no need to put the rt73 sources into /usr/src. Doesn't hurt, though, and it's as good a place as any for them. You do have to be root, though, to install the binary. 
2) You do have to install the sources for your particular kernel. I just grabbed them via Synaptic. You don't have to rebuild the kernel, though.
3) Unlike with the Linksys, you don't have to add your own USB device registration (and that's not even necessary for the Linksys any more) to any source file. The Airlink101 comes up as Ralink device 148f:2573, and that's already in the list. An 'lsusb' will confirm this.
4) For configuration, I fairly quickly abandoned the Network GUI for wireless setup. I think it's a fairly sloppy front-end for the command-line tools, anyway. On one site, I was told that you actually had to type the word 'restricted' in the password box before your password. Phooey on that, says me. The manual steps, which I may  put into rcS.d, were:

iwconfig wlan0 essid MyNetworkID
iwconfig wlan0 key restricted MyWEPPasscode
iwconfig wlan0 channel 6
dhclient3 wlan0

(you may have to cycle ifup/ifdown wlan0 so as not to interfere with the automatic process)

It's also haven't put the same information into /etc/network/interfaces file, as those instructions indicate. That might easier and more effective than putting the commands into the main system startup scripts. The dhclient3 step might be skipped if you can get the configs in before the system has given up on DHCP during the device autodetect.

Note also that I'm using WEP with my 802.11g, while the rest of the known universe has moved onto WPA.

Hope this helps,
Bill Z.

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