Sorry for not being able to reply in quite a while.
First, the good news. Kernel 3.3.7-1 solves the iwlist scanning problem
The installation of the kernel was, however, far from easy. The bootloader refused to install, and I had to learn quite a bit about how GRUB functions. It was all worth it in the end when I successfully booted for the first time and immediately saw that the wireless was working. Hopefully everything will become smoother with future updates.
Thank you everyone for all the help. Had it not been for all your strong support I might have become discouraged and chosen the easy path out. However, you have enabled me to solve this problem learning a lot along the way.
I am very pleased to have met the Arch community for the first time. I look forward to truly becoming a member of this community and, having advanced in my learning, helping others out the way you have helped me
All the best,
blckfx
They work very well and you won't have to bash your head on a brick wall trying to get the rt2800usb module to work, which I've never managed with my Asus N13 USB dongle. The old staging drivers worked very well - I'm not sure what's up with the rt2800usb module given that Ralink seems to support Linux and makes its drivers available.
There are a couple of threads on compiling the drivers like this one for example
]]>edit: I rashly posted without checking to see whether there were any more replies.
tomk, it's good to see that you have got it to work. The problem is probably due to the 3572/2870 confusion.. It seems that the prior is the correct chipset whereas 'lsusb' recognizes it as the latter and attempts to select rt2800usb which supposedly replaces it. I will try to see if the problem persists for me in the newest kernel release asap.
olo, I don't think it was a conflict problem because rt2800usb was the only driver selected in the kernel that was relevant to the USB dongle. Also, rt2870 no longer seems to be an option.
Thanks to all of you for the input!
edit2:
I am going to download the newest build. The index of /isos/ for the test builds contains some directories with '*-testing/' and others without. What does this mean? Should I download '2012.06.03_16-10-01-testing' or '2012.06.05_04-00-01'?
Also, when I download a bleeding edge build, does this converge to the stable release over time using the update mechanism? This is my first time using an unstable (or rather not explicitly so) build.
]]>However, when I try to run 'iwlist scan', I get the cryptic
wlan0 No scan results
feedback. I am certain that there are available networks in the area.
Lets back up a few steps.
Did you run that command as root? If you run it as a normal user, it just returns old results without actually doing a scan.
]]> Ralink driver support --->
<*> Ralink rt27xx/rt28xx/rt30xx (USB) support
<*> rt2800usb - Include support for unknown (USB) devices
Hope this helps
]]>Strike0, I'm not sure what you meant by buying a USB wifi dongle. Do you mean I should buy a different USB device that is known to work with the current kernel? If I run out of options, I could consider that.. but I not without putting up a fight
Regarding the RT3572sta driver, great find! I had similar problems when I was setting up my Ubuntu system a long time ago, and back then I used a dirty fix I found on some forum. I looked at that script and noticed it installed that same driver. I tried running it to see what would happen, but I expected it was Ubuntu specific and now I ended up with a system that no longer is capable of enumerating the USB device at all, let alone get it working properly. I will do a clean install and try installing the RT3572sta properly unless the recent kernel updates solve the problem. My fingers are crossed. One thing that really annoyed me with the previous setup was that I had to run the script again after each kernel update. From what I gather, a similar situation would be the case when I install custom drivers not included in kernel releases (though I'm not sure about this point).
MoonSwan, thanks a lot for proposing to give it a try yourself! Better wait until the new kernel is released. In the meantime, I will try out the RT3572sta to see how it works out. Thanks to Strike0, I'm not yet at the point that I'm absolutely stuck
Also, I went through the wiki several times. Unfortunately it does not seem accurate in its claim that the driver works easily (at least in my setup, and unless I am overlooking something very basic - once there was a case that the hard rfkill switch on my old laptop was malfunctioning and all the while I thought it was a software related problem until I learned of rfkill).
]]>rt2860 and rt2870
From Linux kernel 3.0, the staging driver rt2860sta is replaced by the mainline driver rt2800pci, and rt2870sta is replaced by rt2800usb. As a result, the staging drivers are deleted. Source: Kernel commit
In kernel since 2.6.29 and requires no extra packages. It can be configured using the standard wpa_supplicant and iwconfig tools.
(Stuff about blacklisting a bunch of modules that, afaik, is not necessary anymore.)
It has a wide range of options that can be configured with iwpriv. These are documented in the source tarballs available from Ralink.
Source: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wi … tup#rt2x00
Some of the info on that page is way out of date (like the part about linux firmware) but that may give you some options. I've got a similar USB key-with-wifi here. I can't recall how I got it to work but if you're reaaaaally stuck I'll give it a shot for you. My key uses the same driver AFAIK. Play around with it a bit more and let me know how it turns out.
]]>edit: Just thought of something else you can try:
Download a current/daily Arch ISO (scroll down at http://www.archlinux.org/download/ ) and try if recent kernels get the card working with the default module.
If you wait a few days, you get Kernel 3.4.1 fresh out of testing for that.
Maybe someone else (e.g. someone using the rt2800usb) has another idea.
]]>I did the things you listed, but unfortunately the scan results are still empty.
However, output for 'iwconfig' and 'ip link' have changed as follows:
wlan0 IEEE 802.11ABGNESSID:off/any
Mode:Ad-Hoc Frequency:2.412 GHz Cell: Not-Associated
Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
wlan0: <BROADCAST, MULTICAST, UP, LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP qlen 1000 link/ether ...
ip link set wlan0 down
iwconfig wlan0 power off
iwconfig wlan0 mode ad-hoc
iwconfig wlan0 channel auto
ip link set wlan0 up
iwlist scan wlan0