RT2500 wireless card issue

markez · 04-13-2009, 09:00 PM

Hi everyone, I just installed Debian 5.0 on my desktop because I was tired of kubuntu and I wanted to return to use Debian. Everything is working perfect, until I get to the wireless connection. What's happening is that I can connect to using mi wireless card (RT2500 chip), the thing is that navigation speed is very slow (with a 54M rate), and after aproximadetly 40 mins of using my computer the signal goes to 0 and never connects again. It's a very strange issue because I always have very good signal on my desktop. These are my CPU specs:

-MSI k9vgm motherborad
-AMD X2 2.0 GHz processor
-2gb RAM 667 MHz
-Ralink RT2500 802.11g Wireless Network Adapter
-PNY 8600GT OC Video Card
-Western Digital WD1600AAJS-00PSA0 (149 GB)
-Seagate ST3500320AS (465 GB)

I listed everything because maybe there is some incompatible component, also I'm using 2.6.26 kernel. If anyone has an idea I would appreciate your help THanx!!

farslayer · 04-14-2009, 08:13 AM

How did you install the driver for your wireless ? did you use the Debian Module assistant method ?

aptitude update
aptitude install module-assistant build-essential
m-a update
m-a prepare
m-a a-i rt2500

or did you use some other method ?

I use a rt2500 PCMCIA card in my old laptop and it works without any issues, so there has to be a reason yours is dying..

pliqui · 04-14-2009, 12:51 PM

Quote:

How did you install the driver for your wireless ? did you use the Debian Module assistant method ?

aptitude update
aptitude install module-assistant build-essential
m-a update
m-a prepare
m-a a-i rt2500

Indeed a very needed questions, i remember when lenny was in testing i used to have (still have it but don't use it anyomore) a PCI linksys wireless card wich use the same chipset, at that time i used ndiswrapper to use the card. Ndiswrapper allow you to use the windows driver (.inf) in linux.

I recommend the method that farslayer told you, it's the debian way, if that doesn't work (that i don't think so ) u can try ndiswrapper.

Code:

intranet:~# aptitude search rt2500
p   rt2500-source                   - source for rt2500 wireless network driver
intranet:~#
intranet:~# aptitude show  rt2500-source
Package: rt2500-source
New: yes
State: not installed
Version: 1:1.1.0-b4+cvs20080623-3
Priority: extra
Section: net
Maintainer: Debian Ralink packages maintainers <pkg-ralink-maintainers@lists.alioth.debian.org>
Uncompressed Size: 279k
Depends: debhelper (>= 4.0), module-assistant, bzip2
Recommends: wireless-tools
Suggests: rutilt
Description: source for rt2500 wireless network driver
 This package provides source code for the rt2500 driver for Linux. This driver
 supports PCI and CardBus wireless network cards with the Ralink RT2500 or
 RT5200 chipset.  An alternate driver, rt2500pci, is available in the
 rt2x00-source package and in the Linux kernel from version 2.6.24.

 In order to compile the driver you need the kernel sources (or the
 linux-headers for the linux-image packages from Debian). For compile
 instructions look into /usr/share/doc/rt2500-source/README.Debian or simply use
 the module-assistant utility.
Homepage: http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/

Drivers already in repositories.

just my

.

Cheers

markez · 04-14-2009, 03:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by farslayer

How did you install the driver for your wireless ? did you use the Debian Module assistant method ?

aptitude update
aptitude install module-assistant build-essential
m-a update
m-a prepare
m-a a-i rt2500

I used your method farslayer, now my wireless card is recognized as eth1 and not as wlan0, but it seems that this driver doesn't support WPA ecryption and is the one I use. I am not sure wich driver I used before, because I just installed the rt2500-source package from the repositories. But that seemed to support WPA. I realized these because I use knetnworkmanager to connect, when I connected with the other driver the WPA encryption option appeared, now only WEP encryption option is avalaible. Any ideas?? thanxs!!

farslayer · 04-14-2009, 06:39 PM

This driver does support WPA. check the Debian how-to on serial monkey site.

ifrename will change the name from eth1 to whatever you want it to be..also included in teh how-to

http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/...n_rt2500_Howto

INTERESTING
according to the Debian wiki the rt2500pci driver is already included in the mainline kernel.. I wasn't aware of that.
http://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/rt2500

Learn something new every day.. Guess I haven't fired up my laptop since Lenny became stable..

markez · 04-14-2009, 07:54 PM

I appreciate your help but that How-to from serial monkey didn't work, I'm receiving signal, but now knetworkmanager isn't recognizing the wireless network, and my /etc/network/interfaces file is exactly the same as the one in the how-to, obviously with the iformation diferent. I was watching the debian wiki, and I activated my rt2500pci driver as it is explained there. I already returned the old rt2500pci driver by adding the rt2500 driver to the blacklist, but I'm having the same speed issue.Is here another way of fixing this. Thanxs again!

farslayer · 04-15-2009, 07:57 PM

Knetwork manager is probably like gnome-network-manager which ignores interfaces you have manually configured using the interfaces file, and will no longer display information about them

markez · 04-16-2009, 12:04 PM

Yes I am aware of that, I think I didn't configures my /etc/network/interfaces file correctly, I have a doubt on this configuration. They say I should configure it like this.

auto eth-wifi
iface eth-wifi inet dhcp
wireless-essid MyESSID
wireless-key 12345678

pre-up ifconfig eth-wifi up
pre-up iwpriv eth-wifi set AuthMode=WPAPSK
pre-up iwpriv eth-wifi set EncrypType=TKIP
pre-up iwconfig eth-wifi essid youressidname
pre-up iwpriv eth-wifi set WPAPSK=”wireless password”

My doubt is, should I use the 'wireless-key 12345678' and the 'wireless-essid MyESSID', because below I'm typing that information. Also should I use quotations on pre-up iwconfig eth-wifi essid "youressidname" and pre-up iwpriv eth-wifi set WPAPSK=”wireless password” lines (In the case that my ESSID has spaces in the name). My configurations file is exactly the same as these but with different info obviously. Could it be a form error in the file??

farslayer · 04-16-2009, 03:55 PM

Personally I cheated, ripped out network-manager and replaced it with wicd, and did all my WPA2 config through there. Still took me a half dozen tries to get it right, but it works flawlessly now. automatically comes up, grabs an IP ad I'm rocking. It's quite a bit less frustrating imho unless you really want to config wpa from the command line, and having to deal with specifying the wpa driver and messing with wpa_supplicant.conf.

EXAMPLES
--------------------------------------
http://wiki.debian.org/WPA
http://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse

http://wicd.sourceforge.net/

markez · 04-18-2009, 08:29 PM

Ok I already tried like everything, I even removed the password from the router, and nothing, I also tried using ndiswrapper and nothing. The only way I get connected is with the driver included in the kernel but very slow. I have a 1024 K bandwith connections and it works like if I had a 128 K :S.