Need help configuring Linksys WMP54G (Ralink rt2561 chipset) under Slackware-11???

[kern]

that just sounds like a DHCP timeout taking place while it can't get a DHCP assigned IP.

try setting it static using 'netconfig' or editing /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf by hand.

or if you need DHCP we can work out why its stalling

*dhcp, pet hate of kernows*

[Sam Liu]

your computer does boot up though right? otherwise it could be a different problem xDDD

[Dapper Dan]

Hi southpaw,

I've been having problems all along with my WMP54G and didn't realize what was going on, always attributing the problem to insufficient wireless signal. This card works well enough with ndiswrapper except there are problems setting the essid, dhcp, static ip and such in some cases.

For instance, you can set essid if in ad-hoc, but with ad-hoc, it won't connect to the router. Funny thing is, I had it working fairly well when using WEP, but with WEP turned off, the problems began to come with greater frequency. I discovered to my satisfaction, (backed by several posts and threads about this problem I found on the net), that this card definitely can develop stability issues running under ndiswrapper. I also tried the drivers from Win9X and ME, Win2000 and had the same problems as with WinXP.

Running with ndiswrapper, you might get all configurations set and it might work perfectly for minutes, hours or even days, then suddenly the configurations will change or disappear altogether. No matter how many times I set essid with static ip, it refused to stay set and /sbin/iwconfig would show essid as "off/any." Wep key would sometimes disappear or change to something entirely different causing me to lose signal.

When these problems would occur, I would always attributed them to lack of signal from my router, a Linksys wireless "G." I upgraded the router's firmware without any noticeable differences in signal. The other day I purchased two of the high gain Linksys antenna's and still nothing changed.

Now I know...

The good news is, I downloaded and installed the latest nightly build of the Ralink rt2500 Linux driver from serialmonkey.com and so far the signal has been rock steady with absolutely no lockups like before. This driver seems to be very stable under CentOS. I haven't yet tried it under Slackware but I have a feeling it will be stable there as well.

Sorry for the long post, but thought you might find something here helpful in your attempts to get this card enabled under *nix.

Regards,

Dapper

[southpaw]

Yeah, I've had problems with Ndiswrapper as well... However, I was wondering, which driver works better the nightly CVS build from serial monkey or the actual source code from the Ralink website???

[Dapper Dan]

Hard to say. I'd try the nightly build for a while and see how it performs. If it gives you trouble, try the "stable" version.

[southpaw]

Well, well, well, well, well, well, well
I cannot believe that I'm finally reporting this but I've got the card WORKING!!! WOW!
So, I said to myself, "self, lets give it another shot". So I did, I went ahead and followed Dapper Dan's suggestion of using Serialmonkeys' CVS nightly build (2006090301), untarred it, then cd to modules directory (read the README of course), and as root I typed make and then make install.
After that I did a modprobe ra0 followed by ifconfig ra0 up, ifconfig eth0 down, and finally dhcpcd ra0, viola!!!
As you could probably imagine I'm very excited right now, thanx again to everyone who posted to help an open-source brother in-need ...

[Dapper Dan]

Well, well, well, well, well, well, well
I cannot believe that I'm finally reporting this but I've got the card WORKING!!!

Good job sothpaw! Congratulations!

Let us know if you get any lockups.