wireless (wmp54g) suse 11 x86_64

[jsantarossa]

The driver that openSuse uses for my card is rt61pci. It recognizes my card but doesn't work. I tried using ndiswrapper with three different drivers: XP, Vista, and Ralink (windows). No luck. I grabbed the Ralink (linux) drivers package and tried to install that. It gave me an error on "make" that said something like "the value of CFLAGS has been changed in Makefile....change it back." So, I went into the Makefile and found a couple lines with CFLAGS and, in my infinite wisdom, decided to comment them out, thinking, What's the worst that can happen? I didn't get any errors with make this time, so I followed through with the rest of the instructions. My card was recognized and looked like it was working, even though I couldn't get firefox to connect to the Internet. Upon a reboot, low and behold, my root partition is destroyed. fsck failed, Suse's repair system, from the boot disk, told me to reinstall. Thus, in a momentary lapse of sanity, filled with despair and frustration, I curled up in the fecal position and cried myself to sleep, wondering what I can do to appease the wrath of the Linux gods. Anyway, does anyone know how I can get this card to work?

Also, I noticed that I couldn't copy files from my Vista (NTFS) and FAT32 partition, even though I could read them. Any ideas?

Thanks

[waterhead]

Configure it in YaST as a network card. It is advisable to use NetworkManager to control all network cards. You can enable NetworkManager on the first tab in the network card section of YaST.

[waterhead]

You may also need to add firmware to get the card to work. Check the output of this command for firmware errors:

dmesg | grep firmware

To get the firmware, download this file:
http://www.ralinktech.com.tw/data/dr....1.2.2.tar.bz2

Unpack it, and then copy the files from the Module folder to the /lib/firmware folder, as root:

cp rt2561.bin /lib/firmware
cp rt2561s.bin /lib/firmware
cp rt2661.bin /lib/firmware

I have read that the default driver is not very good, and that you should install the driver that the firmware files were downloaded with. Here are installation instructions for Fedora. Suse should be fairly similar:
Linksys WMP54G on Fedora Linux

Also read the README file in the driver folder.

The only part I would do differently is the blacklisting of the original driver. Instead of putting it in the /etc/modprobe.conf file, I would put it in the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file. The firmware is then put in the /etc/Wireless/RT61STA folder that you create first.

[jsantarossa]

Those instructions worked. Thanks for the help, Paul.

A couple of tips, in case someone else runs into this problem.

• There are a couple of lines commented, in the Makefile for the Ralink drivers, that are for Suse installs; don't uncomment them.
• Follow the Fedora guide and don't do make install after make all - It did some weird stuff to my file system.
• If possible, don't change any network settings in Yast until you're finished installing the Ralink driver. KNetworkManager gave me some troubles as well, but it's still usable.
• You may have to do a rcnetwork restart, once everything is set up.

[waterhead]

It's good to hear that you got it working.

[jsantarossa]

... I curled up in the fecal position ...

I meant fetal not fecal.