ralink (all?) drivers borked with VL5.9 kernel 2.6.22-14?

[bad_gui]

I've spent the past couple of days trying to get my RT2500 based wireless card to work.

It worked FLAWLESSLY with VL4.0 using the rt2500-1.1.0b4 open source driver.  It seems
the kernel developers have tinkered with the 802.11 stack in kernel >=2.6.22 and now
from the three possible open source drivers I could use

RT2500-Linux-STA-1.4.6.6 doesn't build

rt2x00 stable doesn't build while rt2x00-cvs requires kernel 2.6.24 development version

rt2500stable doesn't build and rt2500-cvs builds and installs but I have only had
intermittent connections with my ap with iwconfig I could see lots of TX packets but no
RX packets


I tried the windows driver under ndiswrapper and everything appears fine but no connection
to my ap and the TX packets is always zero:

root:# iwconfig wlan0
wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"homenet"  Nickname:"homenet"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:14:BF:44:A7:AD   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:20 dBm   Sensitivity=-109 dBm 
          RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr=2346 B   
          Encryption key:736E-7567-676C-6573-7469-7070-79   Security mode:restricted
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:78/100  Signal level:-46 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

root:# ifconfig wlan0
wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0C:41:6C:3E:09 
          inet addr:192.168.1.99  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1 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:243 (243.0 b)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)
          Interrupt:20 Memory:fcffa000-fcffc000

root:# ping 192.168.1.1
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
From 192.168.1.99 icmp_seq=2 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.168.1.99 icmp_seq=3 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.168.1.99 icmp_seq=4 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.168.1.99 icmp_seq=6 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.168.1.99 icmp_seq=7 Destination Host Unreachable
From 192.168.1.99 icmp_seq=8 Destination Host Unreachable

I haven't made the AP open since I should see TX packets regardless.

Options:
1) upgrade to kernel 2.6.24 and hope the bugs are worked out of the
rt2x00-cvs driver (kernel2.6.24 includes the rt2x00 driver but it is an
old, buggy version acording to the rt2x00 project page, sigh)

2) upgrade ndiswrapper to version 1.52 stable (Feb 2, 2008)

3) or run a cat5 upstairs for a few months while the kernel and driver
developers sort things out?

[bigpaws]

The first thing to think of is that you
did not remove the module <driver>
from the kernel or blacklist it. That
may create a conflict.

Is the IP static or from DHCP?

The AP is noted which is of course
strange. Note the errors there is one.

Do you have NIC enabled? Try stopping
that device and then try again.

HTH

Bigpaws

[bad_gui]

I manually removed rt2500.ko from /usr/src/linux..../modules/net
IP is static
No errors when I issue iwconfig commands to associate with AP
Here is output from dmesg

ndiswrapper version 1.49 loaded (smp=yes, preempt=yes)
ndiswrapper: driver rt2500 (Linksys,04/21/2005, 3.00.03.0000) loaded
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:03.0[A] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 20
ndiswrapper: using IRQ 20
wlan0: ethernet device 00:0c:41:6c:3e:09 using serialized NDIS driver: rt2500, version: 0x20001, NDIS version: 0x500,
vendor: 'Linksys Wireless-G PCI Adapter', 1814:0201.5.conf
wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP; TKIP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2PSK; AES/CCMP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2PSK
usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper

If NIC wasn't enabled then I wouldn't get signal strength readings no?

I test compiled ndiswrapper1.52 and it built with no errors

How do I cleanly remove the default ndiswrapper 1.49 to install the
newer one (hopefully there is a verbose logging flag I can set)?

[bigpaws]

If NIC wasn't enabled then I wouldn't get signal strength readings no?

Correct

To uninstall Ndiswrapper:

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/joomla/index.php?/component/option,com_openwiki/Itemid,33/id,uninstall/

wlan0     IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"homenet"  Nickname:"homenet"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:14:BF:44:A7:AD   
          Bit Rate=54 Mb/s   Tx-Power:20 dBm   Sensitivity=-109 dBm
          RTS thr=2347 B   Fragment thr=2346 B   
          Encryption key:736E-7567-676C-6573-7469-7070-79   Security mode:restricted
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:78/100  Signal level:-46 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

The above indicates the AP is seen. You could disable security until you
establish a connection then add security. That is the better method especially
since debugging is needed.

Bigpaws

[bad_gui]

The weirdness continues .... windows driver ndiswrapper 1.49

So now I can bring up my Ralink wireless card manually with the following commands

ifconfig wlan0 up  192.168.1.99
iwconfig wlan0 essid mynet channel 1 key s:secretkey

The problem now is that I can ping the router but no internet access:

192.168.1.0     *               255.255.255.0   U     0      0        0 wlan0
loopback        *               255.0.0.0       U     0      0        0 lo

root:# route add default gw 192.168.1.1

root:# route
Kernel IP routing table
Destination     Gateway         Genmask                Flags Metric Ref    Use Iface
192.168.1.1     192.168.1.1     255.255.255.255   UGH   0      0        0 wlan0
192.168.1.0     *                      255.255.255.0       U        0      0        0 wlan0
loopback          *                     255.0.0.0                U        0      0        0 lo
default            192.168.1.1     0.0.0.0                    UG     0      0        0 wlan0

I don't know why rc.inet scripts aren't setting up the device during startup.  At this point
I am happy to connect at all.

Can someone explain why there are TWO files rc.inet1 , rc.inet1.conf ?
For me rc.inet1 is all commented out
rc.inet1.conf has these commands active:

# Default gateway IP address:
GATEWAY="192.168.1.1"

# Change this to "yes" for debugging output to stdout.  Unfortunately,
# /sbin/hotplug seems to disable stdout so you'll only see debugging output
# when rc.inet1 is called directly.
DEBUG_ETH_UP="no"

## Example config information for wlan0.  Uncomment the lines you need and fill
## in your info.  (You may not need all of these for your wireless network)
IFNAME[4]="wlan0"
IPADDR[4]="192.168.1.99"
NETMASK[4]="255.255.255.0"
USE_DHCP[4]="no"
#DHCP_HOSTNAME[4]="icculus-wireless"
#DHCP_KEEPRESOLV[4]="yes"
#DHCP_KEEPNTP[4]="yes"
#DHCP_KEEPGW[4]="yes"
#DHCP_IPADDR[4]=""
WLAN_ESSID[4]=mynet
WLAN_MODE[4]=Managed
WLAN_RATE[4]="auto"
WLAN_CHANNEL[4]="1"
WLAN_KEY[4]="0000000000000000"


Should I use the command:  route add default gw 192.168.1.1
earlier in my manual startup process?

I removed the wlan0 entry from the ifplugd.conf to prevent it from messing up my settings.

[bad_gui]

Here are sections of dmesg in sequential order

agpgart: Putting AGP V3 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 8x mode
ndiswrapper: device wlan0 removed
ACPI: PCI interrupt for device 0000:02:03.0 disabled
usbcore: deregistering interface driver ndiswrapper
ndiswrapper version 1.49 loaded (smp=yes, preempt=yes)
ndiswrapper: driver rt2500 (Linksys,04/21/2005, 3.00.03.0000) loaded
ACPI: PCI Interrupt 0000:02:03.0[A] -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 20
ndiswrapper: using IRQ 20
wlan0: ethernet device 00:0c:41:6c:3e:09 using serialized NDIS driver: rt2500, version: 0x20001, NDIS version: 0x500, vendor: 'Linksys Wireless-G PCI Adapter', 1814:0201.5.conf
wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP; TKIP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2PSK; AES/CCMP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2PSK
usbcore: registered new interface driver ndiswrapper

Anyone know why the driver is removed and then added?  Do the config scripts try to set up the
device while it is removed?

[lagagnon]

"dmesg" shows you the kernel ring buffer boot messages only. All this happens only as the kernel is loading, long before any config scripts are run or modules are loaded. Basically, just showing hardware detected as the kernel loads.