Wireless configuration... nearly there!
Hello all,
I am having trouble configuring my wireless network interface (RaLink RT2500) on a fresh install of Slackware 12.0 (kernel was the default huge-smp, 2.6.21.5-smp). I had trouble compiling some of the devices modules, but I found the cvs available from serial-monkey compiled and installed fine. The module appears to load fine: Code:
root@dinosaur:~# lsmod | grep rt2500 Code:
root@dinosaur:~# wpa_passphrase MY_ESSID MY_ASCII_PASS_KEY Code:
# See /usr/doc/wpa_supplicant-0.5.7/wpa_supplicant.conf.sample Code:
... Code:
root@dinosaur:~# ifconfig ra0 up When I reboot the machine it hangs for a while, then prints the following message many times: Code:
Failed to connect to wpa_supplicant - wpa_ctrl_open: No such file or directory Many thanks Chris |
Some more information...
Whilst trying different configurations, I noticed that restarting the network produced the following: Code:
root@dinosaur:~# /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 restart Code:
root@dinosaur:~# iwconfig ra0 Code:
## NOTE : Comment out the following five lines to activate the samples below ... Code:
root@dinosaur:~# /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1 restart Chris |
Try changing the wpa_supplicant command to use the wext driver.
Example: Code:
/wpa_supplicant -w -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf -Dwext -ira0 |
Thanks for the reply,
I've tried your suggestion, and I get the following output Code:
root@dinosaur:~# ifconfig ra0 up Quote:
Not sure what to do now! I have been restarting networking with the command rc.inet1 restart, but as I essentially don't know what I am doing, sometimes I reboot, and very occasionally things work. So I think great, I'll reboot just to make sure, and then it all goes to pot again! For a while I suspected I wasn't taking a note of everything I was doing, so I rebooted 10 times without changing any network settings. This is what I found: (Reboot #) (Successful wireless connection) 1 -> no 2 -> yes 3 -> no 4 -> yes 5 -> yes 6 -> no 7 -> no 8 -> no 9 -> no 10 -> no Just to remind you, this wireless card worked fine under Slack 11, and I am currently able to wirelessly access the internet through the router from a second computer, so I guess the router is working fine. Just to eliminate any any signal strength issues, I have moved the computer, such that it is right next to the wireless router - still no luck! I'm not sure what the above reboot situation means. Once again, thanks for the response. Chris |
You need the rt2500 module, yes, but wpa_supplicant uses wext to interact with it.
The error indicates a bad, not loaded or incompatible driver or firmware. |
Are you using Pat's wpa_supplicant package?
I might be wrong, but I think that that particular package doesn't include support for any "non-standard" wireless drivers. In my experience, I've found that wpa_supplicant must be compiled with support for your particular driver (Atheros/madwifi in my case). Lately, (out of sheer laziness), I've been using Alien Bob's wpa_supplicant package, because it includes "better than standard" driver support. Alternatively, you might wanna look into the sources for this package on the Slackware CD/DVD/website and see if you can change a few things in the slackbuild script to get the driver support you need. |
Thanks for the replies. I've not had chance to look at this today until now. My current line of attack, is to compile the latest cvs rt2500 module, and compile rt2500 support into wpa_supplicant... this is a bit new to me, so it may take some time.
Thanks for the help, and I'll let you know how it goes! Chris |
Hello again,
The short answer: It's fixed, I removed wpa_supplicant. The long answer... I checked out Alien Bob's slackware pages... besides having a great name, he also gives out some good information! I removed all trace of yesterday's rt2500 installation (manually) and wpa_supplicant (using pkgtool). I then downloaded the latest rt2500 cvs module (rt2500-cvs-2007080215) from serial monkey. I wasn't sure how to compile in support for rt2500 into wpa_supplicant, so after a bit of reading: http://alien.slackbook.org/dokuwiki/...ackware:rt2xxx http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/802.11i http://hostap.epitest.fi/wpa_supplicant/ and of the README in wpa_supplicant-0.5.8.tar.gz, I gave up. I should mention that the README in wpa_supplicant-0.5.8.tar.gz gives quite specific advice on how to compile in support to wpa_supplicant-0.5.8 for several wireless chip manufactures, but not realtek. Just to remind you, the computer now has the rt2500 module installed with configuration files as described in my initial post, but no wpa_supplicant. Just for the hell of it, I rebooted, and would you believe it, it worked! So I rebooted 12 times, and reset the wireless access point 3 times, and each time we had success. So I installed wpa_supplicant included with slackware 12.0 and have rebooted another 10 times, resetting the wireless access point 3 times. In this test I only successfully connected 2 times, similar to the success rate in my third post in this thread. Finally I un-installed wpa_supplicant and everything works just fine again. So I guess there is some kind of conflict between the rt2500 module and wpa_supplicant. Somewhere I've read that rt2500 doesn't require wpa_supplicant and the README says you can use it's own wireless configuration file (/etc/Wireless/RT2500STA/RT2500STA.dat), but nowhere have I read that there is a conflict. So that was my solution, remove wpa_supplicant from the computer! Many thanks to 2Gnu and rkelsen for your help and suggestions. Chris |
Quote:
Quote:
It'd be a different world if all the other wireless hardware vendors offered this level of support for Linux. Glad to hear you got it sorted. :) |
All times are GMT -5. The time now is 03:41 PM. |