No problem guys! I went crazy long ago, you definitely didn't add to the problem. ;)

To sum up, I bought the adapter in September (or sometime around then) and I got it working properly last week. :S *bangs head on desk* Frustrating! I had the adapter half-running with ndiswrapper, but it would crap out after an unpredictable amount of time, sometimes hours, sometimes before I had even finished logging in, forcing me to yank out the adapter and restart. It took a while, but I'm glad I could assemble the bits and pieces of half-instructions and decrypt the somewhat-lost-in-translation readme that came with the driver to arrive at a more permanent solution. If it saves even one person the headache, mission accomplished!

I find it really interesting to help others out cuz we often forget what we didn't know "before we knew", and it's amazing how one's perspective changes with a little added know-how. My folks bought the family's first computer in '87 and it ran MS-DOS 3.3, so command line stuff was the way of things then. I sometimes forget that many Windows users don't even know it exists underneath all of the "pretty".

I'll make those changes you've suggested so that it's clearer for "the next guy". I'm glad this helped out though. My goal was to make the instructions complete and thorough, so your feedback helps!

Cheers,

-Stu

PS. You're right about the root terminal thing, but I avoided explaining it that way cuz I was always taught to "never doing anything as root unless you have to". Fewer "OOOPSIES!" happen that way. :)

If you're finding that "su" doesn't work, you can preface any command with "sudo" instead (e.g. $ sudo make install) and it should have the same effect. I remember Ubuntu being particularly anal about this, now that you mention it.

PPS. There's gotta be a way to set the default wireless connection and avoid your Wii connection thingie. I have "wicd" installed as my network manager and it has a menu containing each wireless network detected. I can put "Automatically connect to this network" in the checkbox next to my preferred connection and leave the rest blank. Try looking for something similar.

Thanks man you have been a lot of help.

And im glad my feedback was helpful as well.

I had installed Ubuntu a few times since Edgy or Fiesty i don't even remember but ive been using it off and on for a while and everytime i decide to install it i have to go through this lol.

I had tried Ndiswrapper in the beginning but that was horrible.

It's funny though, my internet was out when i got home, i guess it is still unstable but it works good for most of the time so im happy.

Ill have to go look around for the default connection thing.

And yea my first computer was Windows 95 but it easily crashed installing a DOS game and i had to call tech support which had me fix things by running commands in DOS so i quickly learned that beneath all the "pretty" is the real nitty gritty.

can you explain something please
 

ok when i run lsusb i get the following
lo no wireless extensions
etho no wireless extensions


i am running ubuntu on vmware player

thank you in advance for your help

can you explain something please
 

ok when i run lsusb i get the following
lo no wireless extensions
etho no wireless extensions


i am running ubuntu on vmware player

thank you in advance for your help


ok reliezed i was being stupid forgot to enable the device in vmplayer however when i lsusb now i
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 1737:0079 Linksys
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

not exactly what was in your tut

also when it goes to the headers it says generic headers

Sure! Explaining away...

Your first results should be what is displayed when you run iwconfig. This is what I get. Notice the ra0 link is present. The entries lo and eth0 are the default local loopback and wired ethernet interfaces, so they naturally have no wireless extensions. This is nothing to worry about.

I think 54 megabits is a wireless-G thing, but that's a function of my router. I haven't bothered installing the N-capable one temporarily.

"IEEE 802.11n ...a significant increase in the maximum raw data rate from 54 Mbit/s to 600 Mbit/s with the use of four spatial streams at a channel width of 40 MHz."

lol...maybe I should rethink that!

---

I put the lsusb step in there to make sure the adapter was connected properly and showing the right device ID. The results of lsusb should be a list of all the detected USB devices on your system. Yours is there on the second line and showing the right ID, so you can proceed with compiling the driver for use with device ID "1737:0079"

I get the following:

So you can see my system's internal USB hub, my round, cool-looking, but crappy 7-port $10 USB 1.1-compliant external hub (I just discovered this...not good for speed! :( Thanks! :) ), joystick, mouse and USB adapter. The actual name provided is not really important, just a way for the user to identify the device I think. What is key is that the two-byte manufacturer ID:device ID values - 1737:0079 - are showing properly.


So, it looks like the ra0 alias is not set up or the driver is not installed on your system. Step 3 is not your problem. Proceed with the rest and let me know if you run into any other troubles. :)

Good luck!

- Stu

PS. Not sure what you meant about headers. Clarify? :)

for somereason it was not letting me compile the driver on the ubuntu 10.4 beta so i am currently dling and installing the same distro that babystuey is using to check and make sure i am not a complete re re and i am following your tut step by step thanks again



oh and the header i was speaking of is instead of going to the device header it was going to the generic header instead

Would you look at that! Yes, you will need the headers for your kernel, so make sure you install linux-headers-${VERSION} as well. Where ${VERSION} is the output from the command `uname -r`. For example: linux-headers-2.6.26-2-686. It can't hurt to install linux-source-${VERSION} at the same time.

Ubuntu is Debian's baby brother with a little more user-friendliness added, so it should work...somehow. I've found that Ubuntu likes to hide a lot of those features that let you "tweak" though, which may make something like this tricky. If you copy the output you're getting and paste it here, I can try and help save you from having to re-install. Perhaps I'll put Ubuntu back on my MacBook so that I can compare notes with you guys. :)

marlboro@ubuntu:~$ uname -r
2.6.32-21-generic
marlboro@ubuntu:~$ install linux-headers-2.6.32-21-generic
install: missing destination file operand after `linux-headers-2.6.32-21-generic'
Try `install --help' for more information.
marlboro@ubuntu:~$ linux-headers-2.6.32-21-generic
linux-headers-2.6.32-21-generic: command not found
marlboro@ubuntu:~$





this is the readout i get

Yup...looks good. When I said install, I meant through Synaptic. The command line version of this is a little more complex and not my strong suit. But hang on a sec. I've got Ubuntu up and running. All of the kernel headers & images and compilers look to be installed out of the box, so no worries there. I think the issue is that Ubuntu installs more default drivers, so it's a matter of finding the conflicting one and blacklisting it. Also, Ubuntu's blacklist file has a .conf extension: /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Will report back shortly!

ok installing the headers now

I think I have it working in Ubuntu...

- Plug into a wired connection and do a full update with System > Administration > Update Manager.
- Load Synaptic Package Manager and install "build-essential" and "wicd" (a MUCH better network manager), plus make sure you have "linux-headers-<VERSION>", "linux-source-<VERSION>" and "linux-image-<VERSION>" installed.

I got as far as having the interface recognized with network-manager, but I'm actually finding networks with wicd.

See if that helps.

- Stu

ok got it working instead of using sudo pico you need to enter sudo nano /etc/modules


thanks for all the help

ps for some reason i am only getting 1mb is there a way to fix that?


ra0 Ralink STA ESSID:"11n-AP" Nickname:"RT3572STA"
Mode:Auto Frequency=2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:1 Mb/s
RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Link Quality=10/100 Signal level:0 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

thats what i am showing

Whoooops! Forgot I added that link from pico to nano, my apologies. Yes, some systems have nano instead of pico...one or the other will work. :)

Your link doesn't actually seem connected...
Access Point: Not-Associated
Link Quality=10/100
Signal level:0 dBm

well i am bouncing off a friends connection right now but cant pick it up in linux but getting 54mbs in windows and having no problem with that but for some reason am only get 1mb in linux