Hey,

I have an installation of Sid up and running next to my installation of Squeeze.

I'm having a few troubles in kernel 3.1 with my USB wifi though. The rt2800usb drivers don't work with my Asus USB-N13, but they should.

So my question is this - what solutions can I use to get wirless running on Sid?

I have two ideas

- use the old staging drivers on the new kernel

- use chroot to make and make install the Ralink drivers to my Sid partition from a chroot on Squeeze. Sid doesn't have make installed.

I guess the latter would be easier so any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks in advance

Hi, I don't think doing a chroot on the Debian Sid install will work because you will still have access only to the binaries available on your Sid partition. Anyway, from what I read on the Debian Wiki you need the firmware-ralink package installed. Have you tried installing it on Sid and see if it works?

EDIT: Another possibility if you want/need to compile the drivers on the chrooted Debian Sid, is to mount it, copy the /etc/resolv.conf file from your Squeeze partition into your Sid partition, chroot your Sid partition, and then install build-essential (with apt-get or aptitude; you could also install the firmware-ralink package this way).

Regards.

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks - I installed firmware-ralink at the end of the update to Sid. There seem to be loads of problems with the rt2800usb module (odd; the staging drivers work very well).

I'll prob reinstall and upgrade and make sure that I have make installed before I reboot into the new kernel. It's the most direct route.

Thanks for the ideas though.

There's no need to reinstall (unless you think you have to, for some other reason); you can chroot debian sid from your squeeze install, copy the /etc/resolv.conf file from squeeze to sid (so sid can find the network), and install build-essential with apt-get or aptitude from there (build-essential depends on make, gcc and other packages needed to compile things, so it will download them automatically). You will also need the kernel headers in order to compile the driver (on the chrooted sid, search/install the package named 'linux-headers-{your_kernel_version}').

Regards and good luck.

1 members found this post helpful.

In the end I got linux-headers in and make failed with an error 2 message. The benefit I'll get from Sid is marginal compared to the effort of sorting make errors out, so I'll stick to Squeeze and pick up a new adapater that works better with kernel 3.1 at some point. Who knows the rt2800usb might work a bit better too at some point!

Thanks for your help - amazing what you can do with chroot!

PS I installed additional linux-headers-all (or similar) and drivers compiled and installed fine. Blaklisted the 2870sta module and all's well (just change wlan0 to ra0 in wicd). Changed Sid for Arch and have a boost in speed on both Squeeze and in Arch. For anyone who finds this thread on a search, save yourself a headache and use the Ralink drivers.