HOWTO: Ralink RT61 Wireless Card Driver Setup

[jordi]

This has been made succesfully over Debian GNU/Linux Etch. I have written this specially for newbies.

A long time ago I had a lot of problems choosing and compiling the drivers for the network adapters C54Ri (PCI) and C54RC (PCMCIA), made by Conceptronic. Both have chipset Ralink. This chipset is perfecty driven by open-source drivers developed by the the rt2x00 Project (http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/), drivers capable of much more than the official Ralink drivers (monitorning, injecting, etc.).

The first thing you must do is assure the recognition of the connected device. Open a terminal and do

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lspci

You should see the device, described as

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Network controller: RaLink RT2561/RT61 rev B 802.11g

The important thing is that, if you see that it belongs to the second revision (rev B), you need the RT61 driver.

Download the driver from the serialmonkey page (http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/Downloads) and then prepare your system for compiling. It needs extra packages, extra dependencies, to compile properly. If you don't have internet in the moment you follow these steps (thing that happened me) you should install the extra packages from a full Debian distribution, I think that all the necessary packages are in the Binary-1 Etch DVD.

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apt-get install build-essential
apt-get install linux-headers-`uname -r`

And I state compilation steps provided somewhere in the driver package. After downloading http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/rt61-cvs-daily.tar.gz, move to the containing directory, get root and do

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tar -xvzf rt61-cvs-daily.tar.gz
cd /rt61-CVS-[?]/Module
make
make install

depmod
modprobe rt61

echo 'rt61' >> /etc/modules

Notes:

• (1) You must replace [?] by the correct CVS tarball date.
  (2) Don't concern about the GCC compiling messages.

Now you should see a new interface when you do

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ifconfig -a

. You can bring up the interface echoing

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ifconfig wlan0 up

.

In order to see the wireless configuration, now I don't remember if this package is installed by default but try doing

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apt-get install wireless-tools

An then you can see the current configuration with

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iwconfig wlan0

or scan the surrounding networks with

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iwlist wlan0 scan

.

I have made a post concerning problems with managed wireless connections in this post, where is also explained how to configure a wireless network connection: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=21520.

[isledweller]

many thanks, I'm new here in Debian GNU/Linux world and ur howto showed me all I need to set my laptop "connected"!

laptop: MSI MegaBook S271X Orange
os: Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 "Etch"

[Math.]

Many thanks for this usefull howto! It's working fine here, but when I try to reboot my laptop I get some message that starts with:

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Process NetworkManager (pid: 27779, ti=cca34000 task=cf02e090 task.ti=cca34000)
Stack: cf8f2800 cedc0000 00000000...(more codes)...
Call Trace:
[<d0de17ce>] rt61_close+0x14/0xe9 [rt61]
[<c02489b5>] dev_close+0x4b/0x67...(and more of these)

and ends with:

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Code: 00 75 09 c6 83 cc 39 01...( a lot of codes )...00 00 8d 93
EIP: [<d0de9205>] LinkDown+0xe3/0x341 [rt61] SS:ESP 0068:cca35bf8
fuse exit

And after this message my laptop wont reboot, my whole system just freezes... I can only start up again when I completly turn of my laptop...

edit:
Ok, I detected the system hangs at:" Deconfiguring network interface... "

laptop: Dell Latitude C610
OS: Debian Lenny

[jordi]

I had never seen that. I began removing network-manager, it gave me a lot of problems. Try editing manually

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/etc/network/interfaces

and with no network-manager this should not happen.

[Math.]

I had never seen that. I began removing network-manager, it gave me a lot of problems. Try editing manually

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/etc/network/interfaces

and with no network-manager this should not happen.

I removed my network-manager, and now it works fine.

[dinesh]

Thanks for posting this tut. i made it upto what you have told but can you please throw some light on how to configure it to work on static ip. ie no dhcp

thanks in advance.

[jordi]

Try this:

Follow the related howto, and use the following interface configuration

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auto wlan0 
iface wlan0 inet static
wireless-channel <the_channel> 
wireless-essid <the_essid> 
wireless-key open <the_key>
address <the_address>
netmask <the_subnetmask>
gateway <gateway_address>
nameservers <a_nameserver> <another_nameserver>

Configure your AP in order to not assign adresses automatically.

[dinesh]

s i did it but it didnt work

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warri0r:/home/userno1# iwlist wlan0 scan
wlan0     Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:0F:A3:79:00:E0
                    ESSID:"warri0r"
                    Mode:Managed
                    Channel:6
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:0 kb/s
                    Quality:0/100  Signal level:-40 dBm  Noise level:-256 dBm

warri0r:/home/userno1# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     RT61 Wireless  ESSID:"warri0r"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Bit Rate=54 Mb/s
          RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Link Quality=0/100  Signal level:-121 dBm  Noise level:-111 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

warri0r:/home/userno1# nano /etc/network/interfaces

This file describes the network interfaces available on your system
# and how to activate them. For more information, see interfaces(5).

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
wireless-channel 6
wireless-essid warri0r
wireless-key open secret
address 192.168.1.15
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
nameservers 192.168.1.1 192.168.1.1

warri0r:/home/userno1# ping 192.168.1.1
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 192.168.1.15 icmp_seq=1 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.168.1.15 icmp_seq=2 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.168.1.15 icmp_seq=3 Destination Host Unreachable
^X
[1]+  Stopped                 ping 192.168.1.1

may be do i need to config anything for WPA-PSK, plz help newbie here

[jordi]

Link Quality=0/100

It seems that there is no link. Do you use WEP, or WPA-PSK? Have you restarted the networking routines after reconfiguring? Get closer to the AP.

[dinesh]

yes i use wpa tkip encryption. the gateway is just 3 to 4 feet from my computer. it once showed 91/100. i have no idea why its showing 0/100. i use to post these messages from my windows box and its working fine with signal strength=Excellent.

i tried restarting the network service using

/etc/init.d/networking restart

but it showed some error for wlan0

after tat only i made my previous post.

plz help, i wanna using this distro.

[AndreAPL]

NetworkManager doesn't work as supposed with this drivers. I used and had lot's of problems.

dinesh, how are you introducing the password?
You should use

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The steps that I'm performing to connect are:
Code:
# ifconfig wlan0 up
# iwpriv wlan0 auth 3
# iwpriv wlan0 enc 3
# iwconfig wlan0 essid f9
# iwpriv wlan0 wpapsk $key
# iwconfig wlan0 essid f9

As recommend from the devs from tr2x00.
Take a look at there, and helping them developing too

[dinesh]

@AndreAPL

# iwpriv wlan0 wpapsk $key

i added the hex key or wat( i got it by issuing some command with router ip and pass) but tat too didnt work.

thanks for replying buddy, i removed this rt2x00 drivers and install the one from the ralink website. its working fine now. if anyone need to know how that thing worked then do plz wait for a week, i m about to write the how to cheers

[j0n!-Sn!p3r]

when i put the password for conection.. i wait a loot of time...

but it not connect never...
what can i do?

[halitech]

just as a suggestion for others using this (I did and it worked great, thank you) instead of downloading it using the browser, since all your commands are in the terminal anyway, why not do this

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mkdir rt61

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cd rt61

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wget  http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/rt61-cvs-daily.tar.gz

this is what I did and it worked like a charm