JoshuaWhite
2007-01-10, 06:08 PM CST
Josh January 10th, 2007
Since there is a curious lack of straight forward tutorials for the installation of specific hardware on Linux systems I’m continuing my straight forward approach to creating such instructions. This time I’ll be giving the simple step by step process that I followed to get my new CNET CWD-854 Ver: F USB Wireless Adapter working with Fedora Core 6.
First off, you may be asking “Why am I using a USB Adapter instead of a PCMCIA Card?” The simple answer is that I have had this laptop for a few months now and am sick of not having wireless functionality. (Compaq C300). It has no PCMCIA slots, which was one of only a few negative things about it, especially when you consider that it only cost 350$. It does have integrated wireless but it’s on a PCI-Express Board and support for such a device is only partially included in some of the test kernels. So long story short I decided to go with a USB Wireless Adapter, to my surprise Walmart.com carried just such a Linux compatible device for under 20$.
So after receiving it in the mail the other day I set out to get it working with fully Linux supported drivers, I hate using NDISWrapper and other’s like it because they don’t allow for all the native functionality such as monitor mode to be turned on.
After a little research with everyone’s favorite search engine, I came up with the following proses that worked perfectly.
* plug in the hardware and verify that the system recognizes it. “dmesg”
* get the specific hardware details with “/sbin/lsusb,” it should look something like this”
o lsusb
+ Bus 005 Device 002: ID 148f:2573 Ralink Technology, Corp.
* from the above command we can see that it’s a Ralink 2573 model adapter, as we allready know we’re dealing with this chip set integrated on a USB adapter. We are very much in luck because Ralink releases a lot of there code and is a friend to the Open Source community.
* Next we can get the most supported and full featured version of the Ralink driver at http://rt2×00.serialmonkey.com/. While we can also get a version of the driver directly from Ralink however there have been reports of instability.
* Make sure that you download the 73 version of the driver.
o http://rt2×00.serialmonkey.com/rt73-cvs-daily.tar.gz
* as with most, extract the driver, configure it and install it
o tar xvf rt73-cvs-daily.tar.gz
o cd rt73.x.x
o ./configure
o make
o make install
+ optinally you can do a “make install-fedora” however it can sometimes cause other issues
* next insert the module
o first copy the newly created module to the proper directory
+ cp rt73.ko lib/modules/{kernelrev}/drivers/net/Wireless
o now activate the module
+ /sbin/modprobe rt73
* and that’s it, you should now be able to test you’re newly installed wireless adapter.
o /sbin/iwconfig
+ This lists the available wireless adapters, you should see something like rausb0 listed
o /sbin/iwlist rausb0 scan
+ Does a simple scan of the environment looking for AP’s broadcasting an essid
o If you would like to test kismet with the adapter
+ yum -y install kismet
+ /sbin/iwconfig rausb0 mode monitor
+ kismet -c rt2500,rausb0,kismet
I’ve been running this adapter for 3 days without turning it off and haven’t had a problem yet, so far I’ve transmitted and received 20GB of data and it’s still kicking. The adapter is hardly even warm. I would say that this is a very good adapter for the money.
Additionally this information is available here: http://www.securemind.org/v4/?p=106 for my own archival purposes.
Since there is a curious lack of straight forward tutorials for the installation of specific hardware on Linux systems I’m continuing my straight forward approach to creating such instructions. This time I’ll be giving the simple step by step process that I followed to get my new CNET CWD-854 Ver: F USB Wireless Adapter working with Fedora Core 6.
First off, you may be asking “Why am I using a USB Adapter instead of a PCMCIA Card?” The simple answer is that I have had this laptop for a few months now and am sick of not having wireless functionality. (Compaq C300). It has no PCMCIA slots, which was one of only a few negative things about it, especially when you consider that it only cost 350$. It does have integrated wireless but it’s on a PCI-Express Board and support for such a device is only partially included in some of the test kernels. So long story short I decided to go with a USB Wireless Adapter, to my surprise Walmart.com carried just such a Linux compatible device for under 20$.
So after receiving it in the mail the other day I set out to get it working with fully Linux supported drivers, I hate using NDISWrapper and other’s like it because they don’t allow for all the native functionality such as monitor mode to be turned on.
After a little research with everyone’s favorite search engine, I came up with the following proses that worked perfectly.
* plug in the hardware and verify that the system recognizes it. “dmesg”
* get the specific hardware details with “/sbin/lsusb,” it should look something like this”
o lsusb
+ Bus 005 Device 002: ID 148f:2573 Ralink Technology, Corp.
* from the above command we can see that it’s a Ralink 2573 model adapter, as we allready know we’re dealing with this chip set integrated on a USB adapter. We are very much in luck because Ralink releases a lot of there code and is a friend to the Open Source community.
* Next we can get the most supported and full featured version of the Ralink driver at http://rt2×00.serialmonkey.com/. While we can also get a version of the driver directly from Ralink however there have been reports of instability.
* Make sure that you download the 73 version of the driver.
o http://rt2×00.serialmonkey.com/rt73-cvs-daily.tar.gz
* as with most, extract the driver, configure it and install it
o tar xvf rt73-cvs-daily.tar.gz
o cd rt73.x.x
o ./configure
o make
o make install
+ optinally you can do a “make install-fedora” however it can sometimes cause other issues
* next insert the module
o first copy the newly created module to the proper directory
+ cp rt73.ko lib/modules/{kernelrev}/drivers/net/Wireless
o now activate the module
+ /sbin/modprobe rt73
* and that’s it, you should now be able to test you’re newly installed wireless adapter.
o /sbin/iwconfig
+ This lists the available wireless adapters, you should see something like rausb0 listed
o /sbin/iwlist rausb0 scan
+ Does a simple scan of the environment looking for AP’s broadcasting an essid
o If you would like to test kismet with the adapter
+ yum -y install kismet
+ /sbin/iwconfig rausb0 mode monitor
+ kismet -c rt2500,rausb0,kismet
I’ve been running this adapter for 3 days without turning it off and haven’t had a problem yet, so far I’ve transmitted and received 20GB of data and it’s still kicking. The adapter is hardly even warm. I would say that this is a very good adapter for the money.
Additionally this information is available here: http://www.securemind.org/v4/?p=106 for my own archival purposes.