Request help compiling driver rt3070sta [solved]

[nightflier]

I'm having trouble getting a USB wireless adapter to work (Tenda W311U).
lsusb shows 148f:3070 Ralink Technology, Corp
It works in Ubuntu 10.04, using their rt2870sta module (after blacklisting rt2800usb).
Running "modinfo" shows that it includes the identification string.

I downloaded some drivers from http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php?s=2 and tried compiling.
The rt2870 driver did compile and install, but no joy with the device.. modinfo does not show it.

The rt3070 driver I can't even get installed. Seems like the code mixes rt2870 and rt3070. I'm as confused as it is.

Any suggestions are welcome.

[retired1af]

I found some Tenda drivers from the HK site. Maybe one of the Linux drivers will work?

http://www.tenda.hk/drivers/drivers_wlan.html

[nightflier]

The drivers from Tenda are pretty worthless. I tried the XP drivers and ndiswrapper. Driver (rt2870) installs, hardware is recognized, I can bring up wlan0, but as soon as I try to access device, machine locks up hard.

My thinking is that if device works in one distro with a certain driver, we should be able to do it in VL too.

[newt]

This post (http://www.linuxforums.org/forum/wireless-internet/161550-solved-rt3070sta-module-license-unspecified-taints-kernel-3.html#post779009) indicates that this person was able to get the device working in Ubuntu using the driver you mentioned, but through a roundabout way taking into account the issue of "code mixing the drivers". It might be worth a try.

HTH!

[nightflier]

Thank you newt, nice detective work! 

Following the instructions in that thread I got the device working.

It appears that the manufacturer's code is bad. However, with access to the source, the community can review it and come up with fixes and workarounds. This is what happened here. Another shining example of the superiority of open source!

[nightflier]

In case anyone else want this driver, I put the source files here:
http://cincinnatix.com/vectorlinux/nightflier/driver-rt2870_rt3070.tar.gz

Compile and install the rt2870sta driver first, because it appears that the rt3070sta module depends on it.
I made the necessary changes so you should only need to use "make" and "make install" for both of them.

The installer also drops a file into the root dir (/tftpboot), which I guess may be used for booting off the network. I deleted it and the system works fine without it.