Wireless woes

dedhart · 2007-04-28 12:29:18

I finally got a laptop computer, its used so not nearly as powerfull as modern machines but good enough for a cool linux machine, it came w/ a wireless card and lspci tells me its a RaLink RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI card. I've checked the wiki, followed the instructions here but I still don't have any connection on my wireless card and 'dhcpcd wlan0' just times out on me. I used pacman to get the drivers from the unstable branch, I thought maybe they were outdated so I tried picking up the latest serialmonkey drivers but I get the following error when trying to make:

#error rt2x00 CVS is outdated and has been closed for the moment.

So now I'm a bit lost. What driver works for my card and/or how do I get this thing to recieve a dhcp connection?

Last edited by dedhart (2007-04-28 12:30:09)

dedhart · 2007-04-28 23:46:01

I can't get the beta rt61-1.1.0-b1 drivers to compile either,

make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.20-ARCH'
  CC [M]  /home/pwner/rt61-1.1.0-b1/Module/rtmp_main.o
/home/pwner/rt61-1.1.0-b1/Module/rtmp_main.c: In function 'RT61_probe':
/home/pwner/rt61-1.1.0-b1/Module/rtmp_main.c:256: error: 'struct net_device' has no member named 'get_wireless_stats'
/home/pwner/rt61-1.1.0-b1/Module/rtmp_main.c: In function 'RT61_open':
/home/pwner/rt61-1.1.0-b1/Module/rtmp_main.c:374: warning: passing argument 2 of 'request_irq' from incompatible pointer type
make[2]: *** [/home/pwner/rt61-1.1.0-b1/Module/rtmp_main.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/pwner/rt61-1.1.0-b1/Module] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.20-ARCH'
rt61.ko failed to build!
make: *** [module] Error 1

Won't somebody please please help me?

WhiteMagic · 2007-04-29 07:52:11

I've also got a wireless card based on a chip needing the rt61 module.

I'm using the daily cvs snapshots of the rt61 drivers (http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/rt61-cvs-daily.tar.gz) and those compile fine on my systems (I just tried compiling the rt61-1.1.0-b1 drivers but those failed to compile for me too).

In theory the new 2x00 drivers should work for all cards but it didn't work for me. Though for some it appeared to be possible by using the git sources of the drivers and some playing around.

If you need to use WPA with your card then you will have to use iwpriv instead of wpa_supplicant.

dedhart · 2007-04-29 11:05:51

hmm that one downloaded and installed in /lib/modules/extra, I tried to edit rc.conf to put the module in manually but it didn't do anything. The only drivers so far that have even recognized the card were the ones from Arch's unstable tree (or at least the only ones udev recognized) and it seems to work up until I use dhcpcd on wlan0.

So far my networking lines in rc.conf look like this:

lo="lo 127.0.0.1"
eth0="dhcp"
wlan0="dhcp"
INTERFACES=(lo eth0 wlan0)
gateway="default gw 192.168.0.1"
ROUTES=(!gateway)

and /etc/conf.d/wireless:

WLAN_INTERFACES=(wlan0)
wlan_wlan0="wlan0 essid any"

ifconfig and iwconfig commands seem to work fine and I use info from iwlist to configure, it all seems fine except when I get to 'dhcpcd wlan0' it doesn't work, what am I missing here?

dedhart · 2007-04-30 14:30:13

ok the cvs drivers do work if I change all instances of wlan0 to ra0, but I'mstill having the same problem with this driver:
# dhcpcd ra0
Error, ra0: timed out

iwlist gives me this warning:
# iwlist ra0 scan
Warning: Driver for device ra0 has been compiled with version 22
of Wireless Extension, while this program supports up to version 21.
Some things may be broken...

Is that a clue or just another dead end?:/

dedhart · 2007-04-30 16:42:27

Ok over at the gentoo wiki I find this in a nice little faq in thier wireless section:

* Q. The script claims to connect, but I cannot get a DHCP address or ping computers
* A. Are you using WEP? See above. Remember that this script just configures wireless for you and some settings allow you to "connect" even though they are blatently wrong. This is dependant on card, driver, AP, etc. If you've got this far, don't expect too much help from me as I'm a developer and not a network engineer.

Ok lets see what it has to say about wep

* Q. I cannot get WEP working!
* A. WEP is a fickle beast. Some drivers don't support both encryption methods, some cards/drivers won't talk to some Access Points. Remember that encryption method on the Access Point has to match the method on the client otherwise it will not work. Basically, if you can get WEP to work on the command line it will work with my script.

huh? a little help please?

WhiteMagic · 2007-05-01 08:05:45

Hm the driver I have still uses older versions of wireless-tools. I tried to compile and use a newer version of the drivers and it segfaulted for me, so I guess they are porting changes to the CVS build despite developing in git.

I have uploaded the version of the CVS drivers that work for me. As I don't have any webspace it sits on one of those webhosts: rt61-cvs-20070330001.tar.gz

Concerning your timeout problem, when you run dhcp has your card already got associated with the access point? What you could try if you didn't already do it, is using the iwconfing commands instead of network scripts in order to see where something doesn't work as it should.
For me the following commands were neede when testing WPA.

iwconfig ra0 mode managed essid APNAME key open YOURKEY
ifconfig ra0 up
dhcpcd ra0

.:B:. · 2007-05-01 09:24:28

dedhart wrote:

ok the cvs drivers do work if I change all instances of wlan0 to ra0, but I'mstill having the same problem with this driver:
# dhcpcd ra0
Error, ra0: timed out
iwlist gives me this warning:
# iwlist ra0 scan
Warning: Driver for device ra0 has been compiled with version 22
of Wireless Extension, while this program supports up to version 21.
Some things may be broken...
Is that a clue or just another dead end?:/

Iwlist is part of wireless_tools. As the warning says, wireless-tools supports up to version 21 of the wireless extension, while the driver uses 22.

So upgrade your wireless_tools. (You'll need to build it yourself, since the latest beta is 29-pre20, Arch has 29-pre17.

From the Debug info on the wireless tools homepage:

iwconfig says : "Warning: Driver for device XXXX has been compiled with version XX, while this program supports up to version XX"
Upgrade to the latest stable version of Wireless Tools.
If this doesn't fix that issue, you may
If nothing bad happens, just ignore the message.
Install a pre-release version of the Wireless Tools (see above).

As for the encryption: I suppose this is your only wireless connection you'll be making, if so: this card probably supports WPA. I advise you to ignore WEP alltogether and set up a decent WPA encryption, WEP is worthless, and only an alternative if you cannot go WPA.

WhiteMagic wrote:

[...]
For me the following commands were neede when testing WPA.
iwconfig ra0 mode managed essid APNAME key open YOURKEY
ifconfig ra0 up
dhcpcd ra0

Are you sure you are running WPA??

I have never seen this way to use Ralink drivers with WPA... This is the sequence for WEP.

Last edited by B (2007-05-01 09:27:24)

iphitus · 2007-05-01 10:46:41

ralink drivers support WPA through iwpriv, and the rt2x00 drivers through wpa_supplicant.

If you ware using iwconfig, then you are using WEP not WPA.

James

WhiteMagic · 2007-05-01 10:52:06

Ups yeah I meant to write WEP but somehow I typed WPA.

Thanks for correcting it.

dedhart · 2007-05-01 11:16:58

yes but do the rt61 or rt2x* drivers support WEP? Will I still need a key to get on an unencrypted network? iwconfig tells me that everything is A Ok but I'm still not getting an internet connection.

.:B:. · 2007-05-01 12:59:28

Almost every present wireless device supports WEP... WEP was provided with the first wireless standard afaik. But it is horribly flawed.

dedhart · 2007-05-01 14:46:20

Well I just want to connect to a wireless network WEP or WPA, and I'm not entirely sure I know the difference between the two but I've tried searching for iwpriv and all I found was an rt73 wireless page, but I did find this command:

iwpriv rausb0 set SSID="<your_ESSID>"

Does that syntax look right? I've tried setting the essid this way but still get no connection.

.:B:. · 2007-05-01 19:14:00

Iwpriv is part of wireless_tools.

As i said: upgrade those.

Arch Linux

#1 2007-04-28 12:29:18

Wireless woes

#2 2007-04-28 23:46:01

Re: Wireless woes

#3 2007-04-29 07:52:11

Re: Wireless woes

#4 2007-04-29 11:05:51

Re: Wireless woes

#5 2007-04-30 14:30:13

Re: Wireless woes

#6 2007-04-30 16:42:27

Re: Wireless woes

#7 2007-05-01 08:05:45

Re: Wireless woes

#8 2007-05-01 09:24:28

Re: Wireless woes

#9 2007-05-01 10:46:41

Re: Wireless woes

#10 2007-05-01 10:52:06

Re: Wireless woes

#11 2007-05-01 11:16:58

Re: Wireless woes

#12 2007-05-01 12:59:28

Re: Wireless woes

#13 2007-05-01 14:46:20

Re: Wireless woes

#14 2007-05-01 19:14:00

Re: Wireless woes

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