I bought a conceptronic wlan pci card and found out it uses the rt2500 chipset. So I downloaded the driver from the raylink website and followed the steps in the readme file. Then I startet the RaConfig2500 utility, and everything seems to be alright. The network is seen with a link quality of 100% and a signal strength of 44%. So I thought I must have done it right. But after this step I am stuck and can't use Mozilla to surf. I thought I had to configure a network as I had for the modem connection, but for a wireless network with redhat-config-network the card must be an eth0 device, but seems to be a ra0 device. Somebody with a laptop seemed to have the same problems, and the suggestion was to assign an IP adress manually. As in the thread said the command "/sbin/dhclient ra0" ends with sleep. To assign an IP adress I tried "/sbin/ifconfig ra0 inet IP_Adress up" and its variations. For the IP adress I used the adress I am assigned on windows (dual boot system). But it doesn't seem to solve the problem. The dhclient command sleeps after that too. And know I have no idea what I could try next. And I would be greatful for any tip.
For those of you might understand anything from it (I don't):
/sbin/ifconfig returns:
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:10 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:10 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:700 (700.0 b) TX bytes:700 (700.0 b)

ra0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:80:5A:27:FA:E9
inet addr:192.168.1.234 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:7054 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:90 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:6 txqueuelen:100
RX bytes:807578 (788.6 Kb) TX bytes:2932 (2.8 Kb)
Interrupt:10 Base address:0x8000
/sbin/iwconfig retuns:
lo no wireless extensions.

ra0 RT2500 Wireless ESSID:"Connection name (just changed it)"
Mode:Managed Channel:6 Access Point: 00:0D:88:9B:E8:2A
Bit Rate:54Mb/s
RTS thr=2312 B Fragment thr=2312 B
Encryption key:"the key (this too)" Encryption mode:restricted
Link Quality:0/70 Signal level:-209 dBm Noise level:-256 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
/sbin/iwpriv returns:
lo no private ioctls.

ra0 Available private ioctl :
set (8BE2) : set 1024 char & get 0

Hey, I'm the afforementioned laptop user. (The veratec 3200 uses the same chipset) I had the wifi working just fine at first, but now I'm having around the same issue as you. I have gotten it as far as getting it to pick up the network, and it grabs the ESSID correctly from the network. I got dhclient to work once, but even with the ip address assigned I could not ping my router. I also noticed that after running dhclient it added 192.168.2.0 to my ip route table, which is odd because my router ip is 192.168.2.1.

I'll post more info as I can get it.

Hi.

As you would most probably guess, I haven't solved the problem. I have borrowed three books about Linux and networking with Linux. But till now I haven't been able to find any brilliant idea. I've tried various stuff but none worked. I'll keep on trying as I find time.

Who ever finds a solution first posts the answer. Deal?

Good luck.

I've finally solved the problem. There just remains the problem of loading the driver on boot.

Anyhow. In case you are still looking for a solution, here is mine:

Actually after you've loaded the driver to the kernel and connected to your network with ./RaConfig2500 you have no more driver problems. But on my system the computer wasn't assigned the right IP-Adress so:
/sbin/ifconfig ra0 YOUR_IP
The next problem was the default gateway. This was the Adress of the router, so:
/sbin/route add default gw IP_Router
After you've done this your Internet should be working. But you cannot surf, because Mozilla (or whatever you are using) doesn't now where to go to when you type an adress. This brings us to the DNS (Domain Name Service). I'm not sure if my solution will work on your computer. I gave the adress of the router as a name server. This might be router dependent. Anyhow you have to edit a file /etc/resolv.config. And an example from one of the books I borrowed looks like this:
nameserver 192.168.3.150
domain store.tuttifrutti.org
These are only the first two lines of five which are enough.

To automate the tasks I've written a script. This makes me have to login as root to execute it, but hell I can live with that. Though it causes a problem if someone wants to use the computer, who doesn"t know the root password.


And I am dissapointed of the members who have not only failed to assist us, but have totally ignored us.

Cool, I've got mine up and running now also.