*SOLVED* RT2500

Hi,

My rt2500 doesn't work neither with latest 7.0 betas :-\ Used to work with 6.5 and below and other distros.

I tried blacklisting ndiswrapper but it has no effect. I manually configured my connexion, I can see my essid but it seems I can't receive anything from the net.

Hopefully you'll be able to fix it for the final...

......that always needs to be done after updating network settings (like after updating the wireless-tools recently), before rebooting.

That advice is always given with any Meps network program/config update.

It probably is something more serious than this, but just checking does not cost anything.

Regards, Ko

Ko Bros

Guys,

Please send hardware details and problem description to dev-at-mepis.org. Warren is bug squashing like mad, so he'll appreciate the extra work

Seriously, he might not respond but he'll surely work on a fix.

In the meantime, try removing all rt**** drivers in synaptic except for the one you need and restart.

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

Maybe that will fix things...Warren is obviously working hard on wireless right now.

There is a "new today" network upgrade, give it a try and see if it works for you.

It did not work for me and yes Warren has been informed, but you should also let him know of your problem.

If the network upgrade works for you please post back here and let us know.
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Registered Linux User #380263

Try blacklisting the rt73 driver. Open a console and type the following, entering the root password when prompted.

su
kwrite /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

Then, add this line to the file that opens with KWrite and save it.

blacklist rt73

Then, reboot and see if your adapter is recognized properly and can be configured.

I had a problem with my rt2570 based adapter working with the betas until I blacklisted the rt73 driver. It works fine now after blacklisting rt73.

Warren is aware of the conflict and knows that blacklisting rt73 fixes it in my case.

Jim C.

Well, I not only blacklisted rt73, I removed the module and all other modules that where not relevant to my system, nope still don't work.
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Registered Linux User #380263

Oh well...

That worked for my rt2570 based Belkin. So, I figured it might be causing a conflict with rt2500 based adapter, too.

Try ndiswrapper and see if it works that way. With distros that don't have an rt2570 based driver, ndiswrapper works fine with my Belkin using the drivers that came on the CD with it.

Are you sure it's not being recognized? What does iwconfig show you? With my rt2570, I usually have to specify the ESSID for it to work right.

You may also want to try the drivers from serialmonkey.com. The rt2570 driver there also works with my Belkin in distros that don't already have one and I see rt2500 drivers there, too.

http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/Downloads

Jim C.

My "essid" is NETGEAR and that is what I have entered in "mnetwork".

What does iwconfig show you?

wlan0 RT2500 Wireless ESSID:"" Nickname:"default"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.412 GHz Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power:-1 dBm
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Link Quality=0/100 Signal level:-120 dBm Noise level:-79 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

As you can see iwconfig is not picking up my "essid"!?!

I'm not sure this is a driver problem, Warren says that it is an impossible problem.

Do you still think I should try another driver?
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Registered Linux User #380263

That one looks like it should work.

Try this from a console and see if it comes up (assuming no encryption is being used with your router set to dhcp).

su
iwconfig wlan0 ESSID NETGEAR
dhclient wlan0

If that works, make sure you have both places setup correctly in the Mepis Network Assistant (you set the ESSID in one tab and the interface information in another). Make sure to select wlan0 under the interface since that's how it's showing up and have it start at boot and start when plugged in with the "Use DHCP" box checked if your router is setup that way.

You will need to click apply on both tabs (otherwise, it loses the information when you change between them). So, if you don't click apply after entering the ESSID, it won't be there after you go to the interface tab.

Once it has the right ESSID and tries to get an IP Address with dhclient, the rest of the info for frequency, speed, etc. usually changes without having to enter it in the Mepis Network Assistant.

Jim C.

Jim,

I gave all that a try and it did not work.

Because it works on 6.5 it tried swapping some stuff and broke the beta3. So now I'm doing another clean install. On the last clean install before the upgrade the wireless worked, so I'm going to play with it for awhile before doing the upgrade just to see how long the wireless will work, as far as I know it may fail after a restart.
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Registered Linux User #380263

I did a clean install and did not upgrade "mepis-network" or "network-manager-kde" or "wireless-tools" or "wpasupplecant" and I pinned(locked) them.

Now after many reboots my wireless just keeps on working.

I probably don't need to have all of them locked, but I'm not in the mood right now to figure out which one is breaking my wireless.
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update: 09/07/2007

I just now ran a little test, installing all upgrades one at a time and rebooting after each install leaving "mepis-network" for the last install.

All upgrades where ok until I got to "mepis-network", after the install and reboot my wireless was once again broke.
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Registered Linux User #380263

The latest upgrade to "mepis-network" has repaired the problem with the rt2500 wireless!

Way to go Warren!!!
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Mepis User for over 5 years
Registered Linux User #380263

You're lucky, I can't connect the machine on which I'm testing Mepis other way than using wireless :-\
I guess I have to wait for the next beta...

From your first post you are talking about RT2500, right?

For one thing I don't have the ndiswrapper blacklisted and I have removed all unneeded wireless drivers maybe you should try a clean install of beta3 and then try your wireless before doing the upgrades and let us know if your wireless works without the upgrades.

I have done two clean installs and the upgrades are working for me, but my rt2500 is a internal mini pci card and I found a possible bug in the new kernel that seems to affect pcmcia cards, I get "cs: warning: no high memory space available" while booting but it's not effecting any of my hardware.

I'll test it on another laptop that has a pcmcia rt2500 card and see what I find.

(edit)
OK, I did the beta3 install on the laptop with the pcmcia rt2500 card and it worked straight away with no problems and then I did all upgrades except for the kernel and the wireless is still working.

I'm not going to upgrade the kernel at this time, because of the known bug and yes Warren has been notified.
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Mepis User for over 5 years
Registered Linux User #380263

Hi JJlS,

Yes I'm talking about rt2500.

Before blacklisting ndiswrapper I tried every single possibility in mepis-network: with and without ndiswrapper, with or without DHCP, multiple net up/down/restarts/reboots, ... I read about the blacklisting here on some forum. I already removed needless drivers (rt73, rt2570, ... ?), only kept rt2500.

My card is a PCI one, MSI54G2 if I remember well. Never had any problem with it when using recent linux distros.

I already installed beta 3 twice on this machine (clean install), it never worked.
I never had the oppotunity to do any upgrade as I was never able to connect (in fact I could plug an ethernet cable but it's a bit complicated because my router is on another floor !)

Well, you know you are using a beta here and it's starting to sound like you are getting a bit frustrated, may be you should install 6.0 or 6.5 both of those are final and work great, not that much difference than what you are trying to install now. As a user ether of those would be the best choice for you. But if you want to keep testing the beta you are going to be doing a lot of clean installs, I have done 6 installs of beta3 and that's not counting the pre-beta, beta1 and beta2.
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Mepis User for over 5 years
Registered Linux User #380263

OK, I did the full upgrade, including the kernel and my rt2500 is still working and the kernel bug did not show on this laptop, but a KDE bug did show, no icons on the desktop and I get two warning pop-ups, removing the desktop wallpaper solves that problem.

The laptop is a Compaq Evo with a P3 Coppermine CPU and Intel 440BX chip.

My main desktop and my other laptop don't have this KDE bug.
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Mepis User for over 5 years
Registered Linux User #380263

Too bad, my rt2500 base card still doesn't work in beta 4
Exactly the same behaviour as in previous betas for the 7.0 release...

Have you tried any of the things that JimCockfield mentioned above?

I have one laptop with a mini pci card and I have one laptop with a pcmcia card, both are rt2500 and both are working.

Do the things that Jim mentioned and post back your findings.
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Mepis User for over 5 years.
Registered Linux User #380263
www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php/Help:Categories

Not yet, as I was not able to access this site from my Mepis installation and as I haven't rebooted yet from XP.
I will take notes and try later...

Still no go.

# iwconfig

lo no wireless extensions.

wlan0 RT2500 Wireless ESSID:"N9UF_TEL9COM" Nickname:"default"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.412 GHz Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power:0 dBm
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-XX Security mode:open
Link Quality=0/100 Signal level:-120 dBm Noise level:-80 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

# dhclient wlan0

Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.4
Copyright 2004-2006 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:0c:76:c8:78:5a
Sending on LPF/wlan0/00:0c:76:c8:78:5a
Sending on Socket/fallback
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 6
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 14
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 1
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping

# ifconfig
lo Lien encap:Boucle locale
inet adr:127.0.0.1 Masque:255.0.0.0
adr inet6: ::1/128 Scope:Hôte
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:221 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:221 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 lg file transmission:0
RX bytes:18736 (18.2 KiB) TX bytes:18736 (18.2 KiB)

wlan0 Lien encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:0C:76:C8:78:5A
adr inet6: fe80::20c:76ff:fec8:785a/64 Scope:Lien
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:15485 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 lg file transmission:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:805220 (786.3 KiB)
Interruption:19 Adresse de base:0x4000

http://www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php/Any_card_using_the_ralink_2500_chipset

The problem I was having was that Mepis was not picking-up my ESSID and you are not having that problem and I don't have that problem anymore and I don't use encryption.

Have tried without encryption to see if it will work?

I think that the encryption is not working or you are using the wrong key.
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Mepis User for over 5 years.
Registered Linux User #380263
www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php/Help:Categories

Yes I already balcklisted ndiswrapper and rt73. I even uninstall all the rt* drivers except mine (rt2500). After reboot, I still have the problem.

It has been working for years on about any distro I have used, including Mepis 6 and 6.5. I know my key by heart and already entered it several times, with multichecking, but the problem remains.

It's up to you if you want to try it without encryption.

I'm using my computer's MAC address and if my computers MAC has not been entered into my router then that computer is locked out, sure it's not the best security, but it works for me.
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Mepis User for over 5 years.
Registered Linux User #380263
www.mepis.org/docs/en/index.php/Help:Categories

I need to allow some visitors to connect through wireless and it's far easier to give them the key than to configure the router to allow their MAC adress !?

I had a similar problem a few weeks ago when I did an upgrade to a Debian installation. It turned out that the upgrade included a kernel update. My clue was the presence of a new kernel option on boot-up. When Mepis boots, see if there is a n option to boot an older kernel. If you can connect with the older kernel, then the likely problem is that the wireless module in not being loaded when the newer kernel boots. Hope this is of help.

Joe

Again, I could never connect after installation so I never update the kernel.
Tried RC5 a few days ago, still no connection with my rt2500 PCI card. In the same time I (re)installed a few times PCLinuxOS, and Mint latest flavours, made lots of updates - includind kernel - and I don't have a single problem with those distributions.