Can't get Ralink Drivers to work

DustinCasler · #1 17th July 2008, 06:02 PM

So I switched to Fedora 9 this week after many issues, crashes, and other general frustrations with windows xp. I am loving the experience thus far with the major exception of wireless networking. I bought a linksys WUSB600N model adapter. I have downloaded the linux drivers from the ralink site but can't seem to get any of the commands from the readme page to work in the terminal. I am extremely new to Linux and also very inexperienced when it comes to anything to do with terminals and I expect that my troubles might be due to mistakes i'm making with the commands. Any help or advice anyone can give me will be GREATLY appreciated.

***Dan*** · #2 17th July 2008, 06:13 PM

Hi, Dustin.

I saw your other post as well, and just jumped in to give you a heads-up.

One thread on one issue per customer. I'll leave this one open, but just continue your discussions about this issue here.

Stay cool over there in Dallas today.

Thanks!

Dan

sej7278 · #3 17th July 2008, 06:41 PM

it would seem its the redhat patches to the rt2x00 driver or the kernel that are breaking ralink wifi as i haven't been able to get my rt2500 working in centos5.2 or any of the fedora9 kernels but it works out of the box on ubuntu 8.04

bbfuller · #4 17th July 2008, 07:25 PM

Hello DustinCasler

I've just done a fresh install of F9 on a machine with a RT2500 based card. There is a driver already installed for it in the Fedora kernel and to my surprise, having experienced the failures in F8 that 'sej7278' refers to, I got a functioning card!

Having had problems with it before, I don't know if this is going to be regularly reliable or fail after a few boots. So far it's survived two reboots and a cold start.

Dreadful speed though, it reckons to be connected at 1Mbs about 2m from the access point.

Have you tried checking in NetworkManager to see if it is detecting any wireless networks?

DustinCasler · #5 17th July 2008, 07:32 PM

When plugged in, the light won't come on nor will it show any wireless networks. The packaging says that the drivers need to be installed before the adapter will work. I downloaded the linux drivers from the ralink site I just can't seem to make any sense of getting them to work.

bbfuller · #6 17th July 2008, 08:21 PM

Hello DustinCasler

I think you are probably headed for trouble here. If there are already kernel drivers included in Fedora for your card the you will have some sort of conflict.

I think you will find from the instructions you have that you are trying to compile a rt2500pci driver.

If you run the command:

Code:

lsmod | grep rt2500

I'll be surprised if it doesn't tell you the package is already installed.

However, if you wish to go ahead you'll need to tell us what commands are failing with what error messages to see if we can help.

By the way, ignore the wireless light, they are the last thing developers worry about getting to work.

DustinCasler · #7 17th July 2008, 08:26 PM

Ok, I copy and pasted the code you typed and entered it into the terminal. It is saying "lsmod: command not found"

***Dan*** · #8 17th July 2008, 08:34 PM

You need to run that command as root. Try this first.

In a terminal:

Code:

su -
(provide the root password)
lsmod | grep rt2500

Whups! bbfuller is right here too.

Take it away bb!

DustinCasler · #9 17th July 2008, 08:38 PM

I'm logged in as root and its still giving me the same error message about command not found. I copied and pasted exactly what you told me to. Do you think its problems in my system?

bbfuller · #10 17th July 2008, 08:44 PM

Hello DustinCasler

As Dan has said, and I suspect it's part of the problem you are having with the package you are trying to compile, when you are logged in as yourself you don't get the path to all the commands included in your environment.

So for that lsmod command to work you would either need to use the full path to the command:

Code:

/sbin/lsmod | grep rt2500

or acquire full root rights in your terminal first before issuing the simpler version of the command I gave in my earlier post.

In that case and as Dan wrote:

Code:

su -

before you issue the command. That gets you super user rights. Note that the space and the minus sign after the su are important. Without them it only gives you root rights over your ordinary environment.

DustinCasler · #11 17th July 2008, 08:58 PM

Ok, I have tried entering both of the above codes in regular, root, and super user. None of them seem to want to execute. This is very strange. I really do appreciate all of the really fast help though.

DustinCasler · #12 17th July 2008, 09:01 PM

When i'm in as super user, it won't even give me an error message or anything. It just goes to the next command prompt line as if nothing really happened.

bbfuller · #13 17th July 2008, 09:09 PM

Hello DustinCasler

Not that we are particularly interested in the output, but more to see if your terminal works at all, try:

Code:

lspci

as root

That should return a list of all your pci hardware:

or

Code:

/sbin/lspci

as an ordinary user

bbfuller · #14 17th July 2008, 09:19 PM

Hello DustinCasler

Tell me, do you have particular reason to think that the rt2500 driver will work with this card?

Looking around, this is a fairly new wireless 'n' specification card and the rt2500 has been around a long time.

Perhaps if you could run the command:

Code:

/sbin/lsusb

(if it works) and post back the part relating to your card we may get closer to what is possible.

DustinCasler · #15 17th July 2008, 09:20 PM

lspci works. And when I just do "/sbin/lsmod' alone I get back all of these results

Module Size Used by
nls_utf8 5632 1
udf 71180 0
bridge 46104 0
bnep 14592 2
rfcomm 34576 4
l2cap 22272 16 bnep,rfcomm
bluetooth 47588 5 bnep,rfcomm,l2cap
fuse 41116 3
sunrpc 151412 3
ipt_REJECT 6784 2
nf_conntrack_ipv4 11396 2
iptable_filter 6528 1
ip_tables 13840 1 iptable_filter
ip6t_REJECT 7552 2
xt_tcpudp 6656 2
nf_conntrack_ipv6 15992 2
xt_state 5888 4
nf_conntrack 49748 3 nf_conntrack_ipv4,nf_conntrack_ipv6,xt_state
ip6table_filter 6400 1
ip6_tables 14736 1 ip6table_filter
x_tables 15236 6 ipt_REJECT,ip_tables,ip6t_REJECT,xt_tcpudp,xt_stat e,ip6_tables
cpufreq_ondemand 10124 1
powernow_k8 18308 0
loop 16772 0
dm_multipath 18056 0
ipv6 221660 14 ip6t_REJECT,nf_conntrack_ipv6
snd_hda_intel 336928 5
snd_seq_dummy 6660 0
snd_seq_oss 30364 0
snd_seq_midi_event 9600 1 snd_seq_oss
snd_seq 48448 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi_event
snd_seq_device 10124 3 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq
snd_pcm_oss 42496 0
snd_mixer_oss 16768 1 snd_pcm_oss
snd_pcm 67076 3 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm_oss
firewire_ohci 21636 0
snd_timer 21640 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
firewire_core 34464 1 firewire_ohci
snd_page_alloc 11400 2 snd_hda_intel,snd_pcm
k8temp 7936 0
pcspkr 6272 0
hwmon 6300 1 k8temp
snd_hwdep 10500 1 snd_hda_intel
crc_itu_t 5760 1 firewire_core
snd 48312 19 snd_hda_intel,snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,sn d_seq_device,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd _timer,snd_hwdep
forcedeth 46348 0
soundcore 9288 1 snd
sata_nv 23176 0
sg 31028 0
nvidia 7091264 34
button 10000 0
i2c_nforce2 9472 0
i2c_core 20628 2 nvidia,i2c_nforce2
sr_mod 17064 1
cdrom 32796 1 sr_mod
dm_snapshot 18468 0
dm_zero 5632 0
dm_mirror 26116 0
dm_mod 48980 9 dm_multipath,dm_snapshot,dm_zero,dm_mirror
ata_generic 8964 0
pata_acpi 8320 0
pata_amd 13444 3
libata 127328 4 sata_nv,ata_generic,pata_acpi,pata_amd
sd_mod 25624 3
scsi_mod 120948 4 sg,sr_mod,libata,sd_mod
ext3 108552 2
jbd 40852 1 ext3
mbcache 10116 1 ext3
uhci_hcd 22928 0
ohci_hcd 22404 0
ehci_hcd 32268 0