[crazyvish]

Hi,

I recently bought a TP-LINK WN321G Wifi USB adapter and tried using it on my desktop with new installation of RHEL 4. The driver cd that came with the adapter never had any Linux drivers.

I started the httpd server. I choose "Auto DHCP"

While configuring the hardware, I choose a driver with the name "Ralink Wireless USB" . But this never worked. Though the manufacturer never said this adapter works on Linux, I believed it works, from the info given by people when googled.

Could someone please guide me installing this adapter and to start using the internet on my desktop?

I should tell you that I am new to Linux. Should you need further info, please do not hesitate to query me.

Thanking you,
Vish.

[waterhead]

It is possible that RHEL 4 does not have the drivers for your wireless, as it is not the most current version.

To find out which driver you need, you need to know the chipset that the wireless has. To find out, run this command and post the output.

/sbin/lsusb

[crazyvish]

Paul,

Thank you for showing interest to help me.

This was the output when i used #lsusb

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 148f:2573 Ralink Technology, Corp.
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 058f:6362 Alcor Micro Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

It did return few more values which belonged to other devices.

And if this could be of any help, using #lspci, this was the output

[root@localhost ~]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ/P/PL Memory Controller Hub (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82945G/GZ Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 01)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 01)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 01)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 01)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev e1)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR (ICH7 Family) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GB/GR/GH (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 01)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 01)



This morning, i found a Ralink Wifi driver (RT73) and tried installing it. I configured my usb adapter as eth1 and when i tried #iwconfig eth1, it came up saying

eth1 No such device

[waterhead]

The output of lsusb doesn't show the chipset manufacturer. Try this command, and post the output.

/sbin/lsusb -v -d 148f:2573

It does seem that it uses the RaLink driver. There is a new Linux one available here.
Main Page - Rt2x00Wiki

It looks like this driver is rather new, you may have better luck using NDISwrapper. It uses the WinXP driver to help get the card working. But, the actual chipset that your card has is still needed info.

[waterhead]

I did find this wireless listed in the supported cards list of NDISwrapper.

1. Card: TP-Link TL-WN321G 802.11b/g, USB
   • Chipset: Ralink
   • usbid: 148f:2573
   • Driver: Standard WinXP driver in the CDROM: rt73.inf and rt73.sys
   • Other: ndiswrapper 1.23, Ubuntu (kernel 2.6.12-9.386), work well after test.

That means that it should work with NDISwrapper.

[crazyvish]

Paul,

This was the output

#/sbin/lsusb/ -v -d 148f:2573
Unknown line at line 5959
Unknown line at line 5960
Unknown line at line 5961
....
....
....
....
Unknown line at line 5970

As per your suggestion i will try the NDISwrapper and get back to you. Hope, I should find one which is supported by my kernel ver 2.6.9-55-ELsmp

Does it matter whether I am using 32-bit or 64-bit while installing drivers/packages/etc.....

I believe mine is 32-bit from the following output

#uname -m
i686

Thanks,
Vish

[waterhead]

That is a rather old kernel, you will constantly run into problems because of that. Since it is a new install, is there any reason that you need to have this version of Red Hat? If you need RHEL, I would suggest installing the latest version of CentOS. It is compiled from the REHL source, with all of the RHEL branding removed. The latest being version 5.1

You should then upgrade the kernel using the CentOS repositories. The upgraded kernels have the word "plus" in the title, these have many things enabled that the default kernel doesn't.

As far as versions, you have the 32-bit installed. It is OK to install i386 programs into an i686 version, if an i686 version is not available. You should not try to install any 64-bit (x86_64) versions of anything.

For ndiswrapper, you will have to compile it from source. I don't know if it is on the RHEL installation disk, but you could look for it.

[waterhead]

The NDISwrapper prerequisites state this:

You need a recent kernel, at least 2.6.18 or 2.4.26, with kernel headers...

You may have trouble trying to find a version that works with your old kernel.

EDIT:
I think that I may have found a source. It looks like the ATRPMS repository may have what you need.
ATrpms - by Distribution > Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 > ndiswrapper

[crazyvish]

Is kernel ver 2.6.9 not recent than 2.4.26? I thought the latest NDISwrapper release 1.52 might serve the purpose. Anyway, I haven't done the job yet.

I would like to stay back with RHEL 4 as I have installed and using oracle 9i database. I donno if I might have any complications setting this up again on centOS. If needed I might be ready to change my RHEL kernel version.

[waterhead]

I'm not sure why they list the 2.4 kernel.

Here's what you could do. Use the CentOS 4 repositories, and update the kernel to match a NDISwrapper-kmdl (kernel module) package that ATRPMS offers. They need to both match for this to work. You will also need the ndiswrapper-1.48-13.el4.i386.rpm package from ATRPMS.

The CentOS and ATRPMS web sites both have setup instructions for using their repositories.