RT2500 Help.

[vrtisworks]

I'm trying to get a Belkin F5D7000 installed on a Debian Sarge (2.6 Kernal) system. I have confirmed that it has an RT2500 chip with lspci.

I downloaded and compiled the latest source from sourceforge. No, I didn't use the .deb package.. sorry.. Didn't find it until later on in my hole digging...

The RT2500 module loads and ra0 device is found. I can use iwconfig to set the essid and the wep key. when I do ifconfig ra0 up it looks like it starts. I don't get any error messages either back to the console, or to messages file. I checked on the router, and it sees the MAC address of the wireless card.

But it doesn't get assigned an IP address. I have tried both static and dhcp. Neither one will get an address.

Here is what I get from ifconfig ra0 after the card is up.
ra0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:11:50:62:9E:11
inet6 addr: fe80::211:50ff:fe62:9e11/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:22 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:1435 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:7594 (7.4 KiB) TX bytes:57260 (55.9 KiB)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0x7000

Also, I thought I should be able to include wireless- parameters in INTERFACES. But these to not appear to get set when I do an ifconfig ra0 up.
I need to issue the iwconfig after I issue the ifconfig.

Here is what I have in interfaces:
iface ra0 inet static
address 192.168.0.21
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.0.0
broadcast 192.168.0.255
gateway 192.168.0.1
wireless-essid vrtisworks
wireless-enc 12ab34cde5

So.. have a dug the hole so deep I need to format c:*.* and reinstall the whole thing? (I have no idea how to uninstall the code that the RT2500 compile added).

Is there something I haven't hooked together correctly?

One more complicating factor.. I do have an eth0 installed, and working. Unfortunately, I can't take it down.. the video is trashed on the system (hardware problem.. not debian.. doesn't even display bios messages right). So the only way to connect is through SSH.
Here is the configuration from interfaces for eth0:
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.0.20
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.0.0
broadcast 192.168.0.255
gateway 192.168.0.1

Thanks for your help and consideration...

Nick

[vrtisworks]

OK.. figured out my problems...

1) I downloaded the RT2500-Base deb package and updated the necessary /etc/ files based on that. Which nicely makes the Belkin eth1.

2) I finally figured out that I should be using IFUP/IFDOWN instead of IFCONFIG eth1 up.

So.. now the testing worked, and it even comes up at boot.

I'm a happy camper...