Arch Linux

gnuvince

Member

Registered: 2009-11-21

Posts: 7

MSI laptop with Ralink RT3090 wireless adapter

Hello,

I bought a new laptop today, a MSI CR600 (mostly because it was a good money deal for a broke student like me).  Everything works wonderfully in Linux, except (of course) wireless support.

The wireless adapter is a Ralink RT3090PCIe:

{0:04} vince@vince-laptop:~% lspci | grep -i net
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation MCP79 Ethernet (rev b1)
06:00.0 Network controller: RaLink RT3090 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe

There's no package in the Arch repositories for this adapter, however the manufacturer has a Linux driver.  I downloaded it, however it fails to compile:

/home/vince/src/2009_0903_RT3090_Linux_STA_v2.2.0.1/os/linux/../../os/linux/rt_linux.c:1646: error: 'struct net_device' has no member named 'open'
/home/vince/src/2009_0903_RT3090_Linux_STA_v2.2.0.1/os/linux/../../os/linux/rt_linux.c:1647: error: 'struct net_device' has no member named 'stop'
/home/vince/src/2009_0903_RT3090_Linux_STA_v2.2.0.1/os/linux/../../os/linux/rt_linux.c:1648: error: 'struct net_device' has no member named 'hard_start_xmit'
/home/vince/src/2009_0903_RT3090_Linux_STA_v2.2.0.1/os/linux/../../os/linux/rt_linux.c:1649: error: 'struct net_device' has no member named 'do_ioctl'
/home/vince/src/2009_0903_RT3090_Linux_STA_v2.2.0.1/os/linux/../../os/linux/rt_linux.c:1655: error: 'struct net_device' has no member named 'get_stats'
/home/vince/src/2009_0903_RT3090_Linux_STA_v2.2.0.1/os/linux/../../os/linux/rt_linux.c:1689: error: 'struct net_device' has no member named 'validate_addr'
make[2]: *** [/home/vince/src/2009_0903_RT3090_Linux_STA_v2.2.0.1/os/linux/../../os/linux/rt_linux.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/vince/src/2009_0903_RT3090_Linux_STA_v2.2.0.1/os/linux] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.31-ARCH'
make: *** [LINUX] Error 2

I learned that these errors are caused because the net_device API has been removed from kernel 2.6.31.  So I have a driver that targets an older kernel.

Has anyone successfully configured that driver on Arch Linux?

Thanks,

Vincent.

amit

Member

Registered: 2009-12-11

Posts: 1

Re: MSI laptop with Ralink RT3090 wireless adapter

I got the device to work by compiling the staging RT3090 driver. If you need specific instructions let me know and I will post it here.

gnuvince

Member

Registered: 2009-11-21

Posts: 7

Re: MSI laptop with Ralink RT3090 wireless adapter

Hello amit,

I waited until the 2.6.32 kernel and now I have the proper driver, however, when I try the command ifconfig wlan0 up, I get an error: SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not permitted (ran as root).

Have you had this problem?  Did you fix it?

Thanks,

Vincent

lamonty362

Member

Registered: 2010-01-06

Posts: 1

Re: MSI laptop with Ralink RT3090 wireless adapter

Hello gnuvince,

Having the same problem as you.

I ran rmmod 3090sta, modprobe rt3090sta, and then depmod -a, and then I ran ifconfig wlan0 up and I got  SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not permitted

Im trying to get this working on a MSI U210 with a RealTek 3090 wireless card.

Any assistance would be appreciated!

Thanks

Last edited by lamonty362 (2010-01-06 23:19:01)

gnuvince

Member

Registered: 2009-11-21

Posts: 7

Re: MSI laptop with Ralink RT3090 wireless adapter

Hello gnuvince,

Having the same problem as you.

I ran rmmod 3090sta, modprobe rt3090sta, and then depmod -a, and then I ran ifconfig wlan0 up and I got  SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not permitted

Im trying to get this working on a MSI U210 with a RealTek 3090 wireless card.

Any assistance would be appreciated!

Thanks

Hello,

The SIOCSIFFLAGS error I was getting was because I didn't have the firmware file installed.  Go to the ralink website, download the tarball for the card.  In the tarball, you'll find a file called RT2860STA.dat (or something like that, I don't have my laptop with me and don't recall the exact name).  This needs to go in a directory in /etc.  I don't recall the name, but you can look at the output of dmesg, it should be in there.

When I get my hands on my laptop, I'll post more detailed instructions if you still need them.

Good luck!

P.S.: Don't forget to turn on the wireless card!  This stumped me for a half hour after I got the firmware installed.

faya972

Member

Registered: 2009-09-28

Posts: 4

Re: MSI laptop with Ralink RT3090 wireless adapter

Hello,

I'm trying to get this wireless card working but it's driving me crazy.

I got the MSI U200 with the RT3090 chipset. The card seems to be recognized (iwconfig give me a `wlan0     RT2860 Wireless  ESSID:""  Nickname:"RT2860STA" `) but it can't find any network.

So i downloaded RT3090_LinuxSTA_V2.3.1.4_20100222.tar.bz2 on the Ralink website. Compile it (that's weird because all the files in the archive are about rt2860) and modprobe it. I've also copied RT2860STA.dat in /etc/Wireless/RT2860STA/. And it still can't find networks. No errors in dmesg.

Nom i'm clueless ... If someone have an idea I thank you in advance for your answer.

(please excuse my english )

mikepjb

Member

Registered: 2010-03-31

Posts: 2

Re: MSI laptop with Ralink RT3090 wireless adapter

I'm having troubles too! Although I'm very new to linux so it's gonna be n00b problems (just moved over from Ubuntu)

I tried following the wireless setup on the arch wiki but still no luck, if anyone knows how - any help would be much appreaciated

shepseven

Member

Registered: 2010-04-14

Posts: 2

Re: MSI laptop with Ralink RT3090 wireless adapter

What worked for me is to install the latest linux kernel image to date (has the rt3090/rt2860 driver built in) then copy the RT2860STA.dat file to /etc/Wireless/RT2860STA/

The only problem is that it's very unstable. It sits at a fairly constant 60-90% signal strength where I am but the connection itself just keeps dying. This is the same for Ubuntu and Fedora. My u100 (with a different wireless card) running ubuntu and fedora  has a perfect connection in the same place, so it's not due to signal quality etc.

When you get your wireless working let me know what your connection reliability is like...?

treefiddy

Member

Registered: 2009-02-01

Posts: 8

Re: MSI laptop with Ralink RT3090 wireless adapter

Shep,
I was able to get my 3090 working with almost complete reliability with an older driver made specifically for the 3090pcie

http://www.ralinktech.com/license_us.ph … ZEdGeUM%3D

I was having the same problem using the driver from AUR but with this one, I hardly ever have problems connecting and I can actually download files of significant size without disconnecting. I hope this helps.

shepseven

Member

Registered: 2010-04-14

Posts: 2

Re: MSI laptop with Ralink RT3090 wireless adapter

Thanks treefiddy!

Using that driver made it work a lot better, but still not good enough to use over the distance I need. I'm thinking the u200 (or perhaps the 3090 itself) must not have very good signal strength. So I'll just try to sell it and get something else instead.

oupsemma

Member

Registered: 2010-01-01

Posts: 70

Re: MSI laptop with Ralink RT3090 wireless adapter

If this rt3090 is behaving like the rt2860, and it seems to be following that way:

This is the vendor driver for the Ralink RT3090 chipset.

It should be later cleaned and ported to use the existing rt2x00
infrastructure or just replaced by the proper version.

[ Unfortunately since it follows the same design/implementation like
rt{286,287,307}0 drivers (already present in the staging tree)
it is highly unlikely that it will see much love from the wireless
development community.. ]

quoted from here: http://lkml.indiana.edu/hypermail/linux … 00866.html
may be you also have to do like with the rt2860sta, which means blacklisting the new rt2800pci, rt2800usb, rt2x00usb and rt2x00pci in your /etc/rc.conf to have it working properly?

Archdevil

Member

Registered: 2005-01-30

Posts: 39

Re: MSI laptop with Ralink RT3090 wireless adapter

Hi all.

I have found Archlinux to be highly unstable with the ralink rt2870 and rt73usb USB wireless adapters. But other distros, like mandrake and pclinuxos, are able to provide a stable connection. How is that possible?