I have ELive unstable (Debian based) on a Pentium II class Thinkpad with an Edimax USB wireless G adapter plugged in. The adapter was recognized out of the box but only WEP and original WPA are supported. It sees my WPA2 access point but won't connect. The adapter came with Linux drivers on CD. Do I :
1. Manually install the drivers from the disk (the NIC supports WPA2, I've used it with other distros)
2. Install a connection manager that supports WPA2
3. Do something to enable support for WPA2 in the OS?
Or all of the above? Thanks

Which "Edimax USB wireless G adapter"?

Please give us its full name & model number and the output from lsusb when it is plugged in.

A link to the manufacturer's pdf datasheet / manual would be appreciated.

Otherwise, I suggest you install the drivers from the disk, and see what happens. You'll probably have to compile the module(s) but if you are running an "unstable" distro, you should already know how to do this.

"NIC" = "Network Interface Card", but I thought you were referring to a USB adapter? Or do you have another interface you wish to use?

Edimax EW7718UN (b,g, n Draft 2.0) The support page is here:
http://www.edimax.com/en/support_det...=223&button=Go
but I didn't find anything that speaks to the chipset. However, I found a user posting that says it's a Ralink RT2870.

Here's lsusb (and lspci for good measure)

lsusb
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 148f:2870 Ralink Technology, Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub

lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: ALi Corporation M1621 (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ALi Corporation PCI to AGP Controller (rev 01)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 01)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533/M1535/M1543 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV/V/V+]
00:10.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c3)
00:11.0 Bridge: ALi Corporation M7101 Power Management Controller [PMU]
00:13.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6812 CardBus Controller (rev 05)
00:14.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i1 (rev 5d)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Xircom Cardbus Ethernet 10/100 (rev 03)

Running ELive stable requires a donation before installation, which I will do once I know I can get all my hardware configured correctly in this distro, one of the very few that even runs the old laptop (Thinkpad Type 1161-43u, 192Mb RAM, 160Gb hard drive). I don't think I'm the only on that refers to any network adapter as a "NIC", despite the acronym, given that most wired adapters are integrated these days. The interface is usually transparent to the OS. The wired adapter is an IBM PCMCIA card with a dongle and works fine out of the box.

Thanks, I try the bundled drivers first.

Thanks for the additional information
You might do better by downloading the driver from their webpage (you gave me the link above). Check the version No.

This might be helpful.

Please let us know how you get on.

Please, connect it to USB and do "hwinfo --netcard". Paste output for wlan here.

I do not know your specific distro but many require the wpa_supplicant package to be installed. Many of the drivers now have support for wep and wpa built in, but wpa2 is often still left for the supplicant package.

hwinfo --netcard reports on the wired PCMCIA card, here is the pertinent output from

hwinfo --usb
03: USB 00.0: 0000 Unclassified device
[Created at usb.122]
UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_148f_2870_noserial_if0
Unique ID: cLrx.XjMFQ79wL3B
Parent ID: k4bc.9t6HQ+31j84
SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-2/1-2:1.0
SysFS BusID: 1-2:1.0
Hardware Class: unknown
Model: "Ralink 802.11 n WLAN"
Hotplug: USB
Vendor: usb 0x148f "Ralink Technology, Corp."
Device: usb 0x2870 "802.11 n WLAN"
Revision: "0.01"
Driver: "rt2870"
Driver Modules: "rt3070sta"
Speed: 12 Mbps
Module Alias: "usb:v148Fp2870d0001dc00dsc00dp00icFFiscFFipFF"
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: rt3070sta is active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe rt3070sta"
Driver Info #1:
Driver Status: rt2870sta is not active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe rt2870sta"
Config Status: cfg=new, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
Attached to: #4 (Hub)

Thanks.

Linux knows about your wireless card.

UDI: /org/freedesktop/Hal/devices/usb_device_148f_2870_noserial_if0
Model: "Ralink 802.11 n WLAN"
Hotplug: USB
Vendor: usb 0x148f "Ralink Technology, Corp."
Device: usb 0x2870 "802.11 n WLAN"
Revision: "0.01"
Driver: "rt2870"
Driver Modules: "rt3070sta"

But you have 2 drivers
Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: rt3070sta is active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe rt3070sta"
Driver Info #1:
Driver Status: rt2870sta is not active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe rt2870sta"

I think you should try from the beginning

Do modprobe -r rt3070sta, them modprobe -r rt2870sta, then modprobe rt2870sta.

After this, you have to see in hwinfo --usb:

Driver Info #0:
Driver Status: rt2870sta is active
Driver Activation Cmd: "modprobe rt2870sta"

About wpa_supplicant, you can check if it is installed: from root console type "wpa_supplicant --help", and if you will see output, then you have it. At the end of it there is an example (in my distro), so it shouldn't be difficult.

Try.

It wouldn't let me do modprobe -r rt3070sta because "module is in use" so I blacklisted (at least I'm learning a lot) rt3070sta and rebooted. Now module rt2870 is active.
I still had no option for WPA2 in "Network Manager 0.3 r7" so I did apt-get install WICD. At first WICD saw no WiFi, but when I clicked the WiFi gadget on the desktop (E17), I got an error and the system rebooted. I lost the desktop wifi gadget for now, but I can still get into WICD from the menu. It now sees ra0 and my access point. WICD is at least aware of WPA2 (it asks for a WPA 1/2 passphrase) but it still displays "WPA" next to my access point's SSID. It tries to connect but fails to pull an IP (setting a static IP and DNS didn't work either). I do get help options from "wpa_supplicant --help". Thanks all, I'd never got this far without help. I can try installing the latest driver from the edimax website. If I interpret hwinfo correctly, it's telling me I have ra2870sta r1 and the version on the website is listed as r1.4.0.0. If I had the best driver for my WiFi and a connection manager that knows WPA2, what does that leave in the OS that is holding me back? I know when I updated my Ubuntu desktop from Gutsy to Hardy, I magically got WPA2 support.

Strange, but according to screenshots on http://wicd.sourceforge.net (web site), wicd should understand WPA2 and show it.

May be this is really driver problem.

You can try to talk on the wicd forum about WPA2.

And, you can try rt3070sta driver with WICD - may be this helps, how knows.
(blacklist ra2870sta, and #blacklist rt3070sta)

I did an "apt-get upgrade" to update packages (and drivers?) and now XWindows won't start. Earlier, I had tried to do an aptitude install of Iceweasel 3.5 (it failed on package iceweasel/experimental not found) but I left the testing branch repos in sources.list, probably not a good idea in a non-stock "unstable" build. It's a new install anyway, I'll start over and post again when I've worked my way back to where I was.