USB wifi help?

[Froggit]

Hi there, I have a USB wireless card I just bought, and I would like to use it on my laptop.

The wifi adapter is unbranded, but came with a CD of drivers and stuff. I bought it as it said on the packet it's for Linux, but don't have a clue how to get it to work.

I'm running Xubuntu 10.4 on an IBM ThinkPad 390X. It has one USB slot and I can connect using a network cable with my PCMCIA LAN adapter (so I know my OS is up to date and can install any other software needed.

The forum is not letting me post any output, saying URL's can't be posted until I've made 15 posts, so I attached it.

Any help would be very appreciated, although please be aware that I am a complete ignorant at all this stuff

Thanks

Karl

[raghaven.kumar]

try executing the command 'lspci' in your terminal and check if theres any wireless adapters shown up.
If it shows u can google the adapter name with ubuntu for installtion help.

Or try using ndiswrapper to install the driver from the given CD.
This is ubuntu-specific docs for it - https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...er/Ndiswrapper

[Froggit]

Hi, thanks for getting back to me.

I tried lspci but there's no mention of any wireless adapters, even with the wifi stick plugged into the USB socket.

Any ideas?

[rokytnji]

That will be

sudo lsusb

for a wireless usb adapter. Not

sudo lspci

Edit: Just looked at your uploaded text. It is looking for

firmware: requesting rt2870.bin

So all you need is the firmware to get it to work. I am not going to be online again till much later. Google Ubuntu rt2870.bin to figure out what you need to do. Good luck.

[Froggit]

Thanks, I'll get on it

[Froggit]

ok, first I did a lsusb

lsusb
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 148f:2070 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT2070 Wireless Adapter
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

Then I googled for rt2870.bin ubuntu and ended up trying a site tutorial where I downloaded, compiled the drivers and installed them.

Now I seem to have got as far as the "/etc/Wireless/RT2870STA/RT2870STA.dat Configuration" section, but I don't know what I put as the SSID and country code (am I UK or GB?) and the password, is that the password for my router? I still can't see how I can scan for networks to join (I'm trying wifi scanner, perhaps that will help)

Any ideas? I've never compiled and installed a driver before, but I followed the instructions to the letter, and think it appeared to go ok, but I can never tell.

I'm attaching the results of a dmesg grep usb

What do you think I should try now?

Thanks for the help

[rokytnji]

What does

ifconfig -a

show. Will probably have to use sudo since ubuntu.

My Puppy readout below running wireless. Your wireless may say ra0 or wlan0 instead of eth1 like mine does for wireless.

ifconfig -a 
-bash-3.00# ifconfig -a
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:80:45:29:3F:1D  
          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:9 Base address:0xa400 

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:15:00:10:0A:CE  
          inet addr:192.168.2.10  Bcast:192.168.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:32805 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:22231 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:23264006 (22.1 MiB)  TX bytes:4627323 (4.4 MiB)
          Interrupt:9 Memory:e8602000-e8602fff 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

[Froggit]

Only my wired connection and local shows...

sudo ifconfig -a
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0a:cd:17:e9:11  
          inet addr:192.168.50.101  Bcast:192.168.50.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::20a:cdff:fe17:e911/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:38 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:28 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:5769 (5.7 KB)  TX bytes:4871 (4.8 KB)
          Interrupt:11 Base address:0x1800 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:720 (720.0 B)  TX bytes:720 (720.0 B)

Would this be because I haven't set up the SSID and password from the tutorial? (it's the first in google, cyberciti)

Thanks

Karl

[rokytnji]

Your driver install for wireless did not take is why you get no wireless readout.

edit: I opened your uploaded text and saw this

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:a1:b0:01:2a:64  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)


============ iwconfig ============
wlan0     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=17 dBm   
          Retry  long limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:on

So you had some kind of driver working before all this mess.

I am of the opinion you need to install the rt2860sta driver. reed9 posted a good link for installing said driver.

[SOLVED] Ubuntu 10.04 using the Ralink RT2860 WiFi chipset (e.g. EeeBox B202) - Ubuntu Forums

I don;t know if that is the tutorial you used. If so. Some mistake was made on your end maybe is all I can think of.

[Froggit]

hi, thanks for your persistence

Ok, so I could try doing the tutorial at cyberciti again, or there's a couple of very similar ones with different settings to set before compiling, but at the moment I'm just blindly following complicated tutorials with no way of knowing whether it's working or even what I'm doing.

Is there a way to get this going before I waste another week doing random things I find in google to no avail?

It's very annoying to google specifically for a linux compatible wifi card, where it says Linux on the ad, Linux on the packet, Linux drivers are included on a CD with the device, and yet doesn't work!

What should I try next?

Karl