openSUSE 10.3 And Ralink RT2×00 Based Wireless Cards

opensuse7tg1 openSUSE 10.3 And Ralink RT2x00 Based Wireless Cards As usual with new openSUSE 10.3 installed I needed my Asus WL-130g (based on Ralink RT2500) wireless card to work and after few minutes I got a feeling that something was not working with the supplied drivers and decided to use the well established drivers supplied by “rt2×00.serialmonkey project“, which I have been using since SUSE 10.1.

So, my recommendation is to IGNORE the driver which come with openSUSE 10.3 for your rt2400/2500 wireless cards, unless of course the supplied driver is working nicely for you.

Before continuing make sure you have the following packages installed: kernel-source, gcc and make

DISCLAIMER: If your card has been auto detected and installed with openSUSE 10.2 then we need to remove it first:

1. As root execute the following command to remove module:

# modprobe -r rt2500pci

2. Head to Yast -> Software Management -> remove package “rt2×00-kmp-*” (if such is installed)

Now to INSTALLATION:

1. Get the latest CVS driver from here (in case you get error with CVS, try the beta driver from the same site). CVS file used by me is rt2500-cvs-2007100602.

2. Unzip the downloaded file

3. Now let’s prepare the kernel modules (I always do this, though not necessary)

# cd /usr/src/linux-2.6.22.5-31 (or the kernel version that is installed)

# make mrproper

# make cloneconfig

# make modules_prepare

4. Now we need to compile a module for the wireless card that we have. Go to folder where you extracted the archive. Open folder called “Module” and execute the following:

# make

rt25xx1lt1 openSUSE 10.3 And Ralink RT2x00 Based Wireless Cards

5. As root run the following:

# make install

rt25xx2zs3 openSUSE 10.3 And Ralink RT2x00 Based Wireless Cards

6. Now we load the compiled driver with the following command:

# modprobe rt2500

(notice that with openSUSE 10.3 supplied driver, the module is called rt2500pci whereas here it is rt2500)

7a. To see that the module has been loaded successfully and the wireless card is properly functioning head to Yast -> Network Card. I am using the the traditional ifup method. You can try/use the first option, NetworkManager, which is better option if you are using your WiFi card to connect to Access Points and wireless hubs, such as when carrying a notebook.

rt26xx4up2 openSUSE 10.3 And Ralink RT2x00 Based Wireless Cards

rt27xx6cz7 openSUSE 10.3 And Ralink RT2x00 Based Wireless Cards

(noticeWL-130g there configured with static IP)

rt25xx3yl2 openSUSE 10.3 And Ralink RT2x00 Based Wireless Cards

(the module this time is called rt2500, as mentioned by me above)

7b. Now configure your card as per your needs. Once configured you can check that all is well and set according to your settings by using the following command:

# iwconfig

rt27xx5vw6 openSUSE 10.3 And Ralink RT2x00 Based Wireless Cards
(the alias for module is “wlan0″ and not “ra0″ as it was with SUSE 10.1)

And here is a snapshot of my Windows Mobile phone being connected to my desktop:

rt27xx6yl2 openSUSE 10.3 And Ralink RT2x00 Based Wireless Cards

There you go …. hope this helps to resolve some issues. I am using simple WEP-128bit secure connection. The card is acting as a wireless router for my notebook and other WiFi devices to connect and have access to internet.

Check this link if you are thinking of turning your computer as a router for your home/small office internet sharing.

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Comment by Khürt Williams on October 06, 2007

Your very first sentence says it all:

As usual with new openSUSE 10.3 installed I needed my Asus WL-130g (based on Ralink RT2500) wireless card to work ….

Crap like this ( driver hell ) is why I gave up on Linux as a desktop alternative and use a real UNIX like OS-X. Every update or patch would leave my system useless for days while I either found an updated driver or compiled one from source.

Comment by E@zyVG on October 06, 2007

Actually the supplied rt2×00 with openSUSE 10.3 did work on my friends machine, as he also has Ralink’s based WiFi card. It is just that it didn’t work for me, and it took me 2 minutes to get it up and running.

OS X is definitely excellent OS … no doubt … but then for me Linux, especially openSUSE, is better option.

Comment by Olivier on October 06, 2007

Thanks for you article. I was somehow hoping not to find such an article and quite disappointed that suse has not include serialmonkey’s driver at least as an option….

Comment by onederer on October 07, 2007

Heck I bypassed all those above problems. I decided to use Freespire. All codecs are included in the OS, so not much of an effort had to be done to run my wireless card. That makes life such a charm!

Comment by Olivier on October 17, 2007

Something I notice is that in your case, despite using serial monkey’s driver, your device is still called wlan0. For me it’s ra0…. and it doesn’t work… Did you do anything to achieve that ?

I can do a scan but dhcp never receives an address and routing info, whereas I have several other devices successfully connecting to it.

Comment by Blaine Simpson on October 19, 2007

(Sorry to double-post. I originally posted this in the 10.2 blog; but I’m working with 10.3).

I followed your instructions and downloaded the latest rt2500 beta. This does not compile with my standard 10.3 installation. For starters, the code references /usr/include/linux/config.h, which is not present in 10.3; it uses a C macro which was deprecated in 10.1 and removed in 10.3– these I fixed easily enough… but then there is usage of pci structures which have been totally refactored in a network pci header file (don’t remember which… this was about 30 hours ago). I’m not going to take a week to rewrite the serial monkey pci code. It very much looks like the Serial Monkeys :) only intend to get the drivers working with a stale old commercial version of RH. I really do want to get the newer serial monkey driver to work, because I know first hand that the Suse-supplied one really sucks. Do you think CVS HEAD of Serial Monkey would compile any better? I’m really reaching the end of my patience with this.

I’m running kernel to 2.6.22.5-31 (64 bit default).

I was able to compile RaLink’s current code after some minor C code editing, but for some reason the resulting object file (a .o, not .ko) is rejected by the kernel (I spent some time trying to get the make file to do standard kernel shared lib setup, but it still would not load).

I used Suse’s Serial Monkey driver by putting the rt2561.bin file into /lib/firmware, but it works terribly. Requires custom scripting to get it to connect to the access point; custom heartbeat to prevent it from dropping; rates of only .8/4.6 Mbps (upload/download, measured with nuttcp). I know that my runtime problems have nothing to do with hardware, distances, interference, etc., because I’m working with a dual-boot system and this card works perfectly well from Windows.

Comment by The Doc on November 03, 2007

I use a rt73 chipset USB wireless network adapter. I tried to make it work with no resaults yet. Tried SuSe’s apps and also tried to use ralink’s offical driver releases.
It’s possible i mess on something-suse’s default not working on this adapter for sure.

Can anyone help me through the installation procedure in case there is a sucesful scenario on Ralink chipset USB wireless adapters ?

Thank you

Comment by hschier on January 06, 2008

RaLink modules used by SUSE 10.3 are using rt2xx00pci module from
http://rt2×00.serialmonkey.com. This module is using the standard
wpa_supplicant method for WPA encryption.

All wireless interfaces will be renamed from their generic interface
names (ra%n e.g. ra0) to wlan%n (e.g wlan0) during initialization via
udev system.

If yast does find any known wlan interface (e.g.wlan0), it will try
to configure it, using wp_supplicant, which will break the interface,
because of calls to non implemented routines.

Please note: you *can* use the standard procedure if you are *not* using
WPA encyption, e.g. WEP or no encyption at all, which is not recomended!

If you want to us WPA encryption with RT2500 chipset you have to

1) use the legacy driver for rt2500, module name rt2500 in contrast
to standard module rt2500pci

2) make shure, that yast does not even try to configure the interface

Dwonload the rt2500-cvs-daily.tar.gz source code from http://rt2×00.serialmonkey.com
my version was rt2500-cvs-2007123016, the last Beta driver,
rt2500-1.1.0-b4, did no longer compile on kernel
version 2.6.22.13, because of restructuring of the kernel interface.

Untar, go to the Modules directory and
>do make
it will compile the module rt2500.ko.

As root, do
>make install
and load the module with
>modprobe rt2500

Now you have to assure, that the interface is installed as ra0 not as wlan0. You have
to tweak the udev system, in

/etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules
you have to change the NAME=”wlan0″ to NAME=”ra0″
e.g.
# PCI device 0×1814:0×0201 (rt2500pci)
SUBSYSTEM==”net”, DRIVERS==”?*”, ATTR{address}==”00:09:f3:72:15:15″, ATTR{type}==”1″, NAME=”ra0″

Now when you have the correct interface name ra0, you have to
configure the interface manually as a traditional service
starting at boot time by adding the file

/etc/sysconfig/network/ifcfg-ra0
DEVICE=’ra0′
ONBOOT=’yes’
BOOTPROTO=’dhcp’
WIRELESS=’no’
STARTMODE=’auto’
USERCONTROL=’no’

The statement WIRELESS=’no’ prevents yast from grabbing the interface.

For configuration you may use

a) the static file /etc/Wireless/RT2500STA/RT2500STA.dat

*or*

b) the utility RutilT, I am using version 0.16.
The old configuration utility ra2500config does no longer compile.

———the static configuration file for WPA-PSK—————-
/etc/Wireless/RT2500STA/RT2500STA.dat
# Copy this file to /etc/Wireless/RT2500STA/RT2500STA.dat
# This file is a binary file and will be read on loading rt2500.o module.
# Use “vi -b RT2500STA.dat” to modify settings according to your need.

[Default]
AdhocOfdm=0
CountryRegion=0
WirelessMode=0
TXBurst=0
TurboRate=0
BGProtection=0
ShortSlot=0
#TxBurst=0
#TxPreamble=2
TxRate=0
PSMode=CAM
SSID=your_Wlan_name
NetworkType=Infra
#Channel=1
AuthMode=WPAPSK
EncrypType=TKIP
#DefaultKeyID=1
#Key1=
#Key2=
#Key3=
#Key4=
#WPANONE=abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
WPAPSK=your_WPAPSK_password
RTSThreshold=2312
FragThreshold=2312
PSMode=CAM
#RFMON=0
#StaWithEtherBridge=0
—————————————————————-

Comment by Carlos Antonio Lopes Piubello on January 18, 2008

Olá….

Graças às dicas nessa página eu consegui conectar minha internet via rádio…..

Já estava para desistir do openSUSE 10.3

Com ele, agora está todo meu hardware funcionando plenamente.

Valeu pessoal.

Comment by hector on June 07, 2008

To compile the utility RaConfig2500 in suse linux 10.3 you need to change all appearances of ‘#include “linux/wireless.h”‘ by ‘#include “iwlib.h”‘ in the sources of the utility where it appears (there are a few .h which include it).

It works much better for me than rutilt (saves profiles properly etc…).