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Old 07-27-2006, 10:39 AM   #1
Mr. Spencer
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PCMCIA RT2500 connection problems


I recently installed Slackware 10.2, with test26.s kernel, on a Thinkpad T23. It's equipped with an E-tech WCP03 PCMCIA wireless card, using the Ralink rt2500 chipset. I downloaded the rt2500 drivers from the rt2x00 site, followed the 'make', 'make install'/'qmake -o..', 'make' instructions to compile both the module and the Ralink utility. Rebooted and the driver was recognized, the wifi card activated (both 'Act' and 'Link' lights) burned continuously.

Time to set up the card. I use WPA-PSK/TKIP for security. RaConfig found several wireless networks, including mine. I selected and activated it, adding the password in ASCII format. Connecting, however, didn't work. Packets were sent and received but no connections. Next, I tried the Rutilt utility; this also saw my AP but still no connection.

Next, after a complete Slack reinstall, installed Alien's packages, through pkgtool. Rebooted. During bootup, 'dhcpcd ra0' scrolled along and the card was probed but not activated. I tried to manually dhcpcd ra0. The lights activated every few seconds as the card was probed. During that time, I could call up RaConfig, however, after several probes, the card shut down again. Nine out of ten times, when I manually run dhcpcd, this happens. Somehow, at boot, the module isn't loaded.

This is a copy of my RT2500STA.dat file:

[Default]
CountryRegion=0
ProfileID=XS4ALL
SSID=MyESSIDNAME
NetworkType=Infra
PreambleType=Auto
RTSThreshold=2312
FragThreshold=2312
AuthMode=WPAPSK
EncrypType=TKIP
WPAPSK=LLCCLCCCCC
Channel=0
PSMode=CAM

I uncommented options in the rc.inet1.conf file:

[HTML]## Example config information for wlan0. Uncomment the lines you need and fill
## in your info. (You may not need all of these for your wireless network)
IFNAME[4]="ra0"
IPADDR[4]=""
NETMASK[4]=""
USE_DHCP[4]="yes"
#DHCP_HOSTNAME[4]="icculus-wireless"
#DHCP_KEEPRESOLV[4]="yes"
#DHCP_KEEPNTP[4]="yes"
#DHCP_KEEPGW[4]="yes"
#DHCP_IPADDR[4]=""
WLAN_ESSID[4]=MyESSIDNAME
WLAN_MODE[4]=Managed
##WLAN_RATE[4]="54M auto"
WLAN_CHANNEL[4]="auto"
##WLAN_KEY[4]="D5AD1F04ACF048EC2D0B1C80C7"
WLAN_IWPRIV[4]="AuthMode=WPAPSK EncrypType=TKIP WPAPSK=s:MYWPAPSKEY TxRate=0"
#WLAN_WPA[4]="wpa_supplicant"
#WLAN_WPADRIVER[4]="ndiswrapper"

## Some examples of additional network parameters that you can use.
## Config information for wlan0:
#IFNAME[4]="wlan0" # Use a different interface name nstead of
# the default 'eth4'
#HWADDR[4]="00:01:23:45:67:89" # Overrule the card's hardware MAC address
#MTU[4]="" # The default MTU is 1500, but you might need
# 1360 when you use NAT'ed IPSec traffic.
#DHCP_KEEPRESOLV[4]="yes" # If you dont want /etc/resolv.conf overwritten
#DHCP_KEEPNTP[4]="yes" # If you don't want ntp.conf overwritten
#DHCP_KEEPGW[4]="yes" # If you don't want the DHCP server to change
# your default gateway
#DHCP_IPADDR[4]="" # Request a specific IP address from the DHCP
# server
#WLAN_ESSID[4]=DARKSTAR # Here, you can override _any_ parameter
# defined in rc.wireless.conf, by prepending
# 'WLAN_' to the parameter's name. Useful for
# those with multiple wireless interfaces.
#WLAN_IWPRIV[4]="AuthMode=WPAPSK EncrypType=TKIP WPAPSK=thekey TxRate=0"
# Some drivers require a private ioctl to be
# set through the iwpriv command. If more than
# one is required, you can place them in the
# IWPRIV parameter (space-separated, see the
# example).[/HTML]

This is what iwconfig shows:

PHP Code:
ra0       RT2500 Wireless  ESSID:"MyESSIDNAME"  Nickname:"thinkpad"
          
Mode:Managed  Frequency=2.412 GHz  Bit Rate=24 Mb/s
          RTS thr
:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key
:off
          Link Quality
=71/100  Signal level=-50 dBm  Noise level:-192 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid
:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries
:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:
I've reinstalled Slack again and am going to try the rt2x00 drivers again. If that doesn't work, I'll try using Ndiswrapper. Any help on what I've done wrong would be appreciated because right now, I'm at a loss.
 
Old 07-27-2006, 11:06 AM   #2
Alien Bob
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Try to remove the RT2500STA.dat file. If the driver does not find that file, it will be able to be configured using iwconfig commands with the configuration data you entered into rc.inet1.conf / rc.wireless.conf

I think RT2500STA.dat and the accompanying binary are better avoided. My rt2500 card works flawlessly without those (and I use it on a daily basis).

Eric
 
Old 08-07-2006, 10:43 AM   #3
Mr. Spencer
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Location: Netherlands
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Question

Sorry for not getting back sooner, but RL has been swamping me. Thanks for the help, Alien, just tried it.

I removed the .dat file, changed the rc.inet1 file to my system's specs, ran iwconfig/iwpriv, according to the text file with the driver and rebooted. Now, when dhcpcd runs, the lights of the card don't flicker on/off as before. It does find a mac address, not sure of what device; the next line reads : /etc/rc.d/rc.M: ra0 is 'Any ESSID'. After that, the next line reads dhcpcd: MAC address = 'the card's mac address'.

Even manual running of dhcpcd doesn't start the card. Do I need to add something to rc.wireless? I've tried to uninstall the module with 'make uninstall' but it doesn't seem to work, or is that not possible with modules. Or is there another way to do that?

Next step, is going to be to delete the rc conf file, reboot and see if it will generate a new one. Try to use that one and if it doens't work either, I will try using ndiswrapper.

Last edited by Mr. Spencer; 08-07-2006 at 10:45 AM.
 
Old 08-07-2006, 11:13 AM   #4
Alien Bob
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Spencer
WLAN_IWPRIV[4]="AuthMode=WPAPSK EncrypType=TKIP WPAPSK=s:MYWPAPSKEY TxRate=0
Try to replace WPAPSK=s:MYWPAPSKEY with WPAPSK=MY_HEX_WPAKEY and omit "TxRate=0" so that the line reads:
Code:
WLAN_IWPRIV[4]="AuthMode=WPAPSK EncrypType=TKIP WPAPSK=MY_HEX_WPAKEY
I do not know whether the rt500 support the "s:some_asciistring" convention in the ipriv command. Setting the HEX key does work, however.

Eric
 
Old 08-07-2006, 01:46 PM   #5
Mr. Spencer
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WPAPSK=MY_HEX_WPAKEY = the letters of my ESSID run through a ascii to hex converter and then putting the numbers generated in place? I'll try that one
 
Old 08-07-2006, 03:17 PM   #6
Alien Bob
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Spencer
WPAPSK=MY_HEX_WPAKEY = the letters of my ESSID run through a ascii to hex converter and then putting the numbers generated in place? I'll try that one
It is not that simple...
Perhaps your Access Point can tell you what the HEX representation of your WPA key is.

Eric
 
Old 08-07-2006, 04:57 PM   #7
Mr. Spencer
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I'm just checking my AP from another machine and sadly, it doesn't show the hex representation of the ascii characters. I can configure it with either ascii (8 to 63) or hex (64) characters, but the current one isn't shown as a hex value.

I've also tried ndiswrapper, though that doesn't seem to work either. It's very strange since the card does work flawlessly under Win2K.

Something else I noticed, when using RaConfig, is that the card connects to the AP, there is traffic back and forth, but after a few seconds, the connection is broken, then starts up again. This keeps happening. I did a search on the rt2xx forum and it seems to be a problem with AP's running both WPA and WPA2, like mine does. It is strange, since the notebook I'm working on currently, has an internal wifi card, based on the RT2500 card and I managed to connect without much problems under Suse 10.0. Granted, using ndiswrapper and following the standard instructions of ndiswrapper -i.

Whether using ndiswrapper or the rt2500 drivers from rt2xx, configuring the card in the console doens't work. I can type iwconfig ra0 essid My Network as many times as I want, when I run iwconfig ra0, not one of the changes I've made has been implemented. Even uncommenting the lines and changing the parameters in rc.inet1.conf doens't seem to work. The only thing that does work, is the rt2500.dat file that's build by RaConfig. Once I run that, the necessary parameters are available, but like mentioned before, the card keeps disconnecting after a few seconds. At least, while running the .dat file, the card is active. Not running it through that, deactivates the card, both under the rt2500 drivers, as under ndiswrapper. No matter how much times I run dhcpcd ra0, it doesn't come back up.

Right now, I'm at a loss. The only thing I can think of doing now, is getting the cvs source from rt2xx and see if that fixes the problem.

Thanks again for all the advice and work you've put in the packages on your site. I'll keep muddling through.
 
Old 08-07-2006, 05:53 PM   #8
vdemuth
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Try setting it first with no security, then wep, and then onto wpa. I use the same chipset here albeit built in with no problems now, but did have similar issues to what you describe. Proved the driver by using open mode first of all, only adding security when I was sure that the link worked first. FYI though, the RA2500 util seems not to run the dhcpcd command when you would expect that it would, so that needs to be run seperately, maybe through the rc.local script.
 
Old 08-07-2006, 11:44 PM   #9
cwwilson721
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I use the drivers found at serialmonkey. I have found that they are more reliable than the drivers from ralink.

The advice about first connecting with no security is dead on. Make sure it works first, then add in other possible problems. That way, you know if it's the driver, the wep, wpa, or whatever. Always start simple.
 
Old 08-08-2006, 04:22 AM   #10
Mr. Spencer
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[QUOTE=cwwilson721]I use the drivers found at serialmonkey. I have found that they are more reliable than the drivers from ralink.

Those are the ones I'm using, CW and are the ones that at least connect/disconnect all the time, when I use the RaConfig utility packed in the Utilitys folder. There's a thread on the forums there with regards to similar problems I'm having, problems with WPA and rt2500

I'm not really happy with running without any encryption, even if it is only for testing purposes, since I can see several other wireless networks, both open and secured, in my neighborhood. It'll have to wait till the weekend.

Thanks again.
 
Old 08-08-2006, 01:35 PM   #11
cwwilson721
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I'm not happy doing it myself, but you gotta do what you gotta do. If I were you, I would disconnect the internet modem so at least nobody can do anything nefarious while it's up fo that short time...
 
Old 08-14-2006, 03:04 PM   #12
Mr. Spencer
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Well, had some time today. Started with a clean install using test26.s kernel. Rebooted, went to the linux-2.6.13 folder and installed every package, incl. kernel-generic. I didn't install this last one during previous installs, because I'd read in another thread that it installed when you choose which kernel to use for installation.

After installing the packages, rebooted; copied the serialmonkey drivers from the shared partition to /root, cd'd to Modules and ran make/make install. I would like to say everything went flawlessly and so far as I can see, they did. The only thing that I could see what could be problematic was that the first line after 'make' was [HTML]WARNING: Symbol version dump /usr/src/linux-2.6.13/Module.symvers
is missing; modules will have no dependencies and modversions.[/HTML]

This line is something I've seen every time I run 'make'. Don't know if it has any influence, but I don't think so. As I said, everything went flawlessly, apart from that first line. A line was added to modprobe the module during bootup etc. Now, during previous installs, the card came up immediately, as both lights started burning continuously. This time, however, neither of the lights burn.

I disregarded that, went ahead and started with editing rc.wireless and rc.inet1.conf.

I added commented out the first lines,
[HTML]
#*)
# INFO="Any ESSID"
# ESSID="any"
# ;;[/HTML]

and added the following to rc.wireless:

[HTML]
# E-Tech WGPC03_rev2 Wireless PC-Card
00:0E:8E:02:20:40)
INFO="E-TECH WGPC03_rev2"
ESSID="SPEEDTOUCH6E9193"
MODE="MANAGED"
KEY="AD26A55618"
;;

esac[/HTML]

rc.inet1.conf was edited thus (also changed the [4] to [1]:
[HTML]
## Example config information for wlan0. Uncomment the lines you need and fill
## in your info. (You may not need all of these for your wireless network)
IFNAME[1]="ra0"
IPADDR[1]=""
NETMASK[1]=""
USE_DHCP[1]="yes"
#DHCP_HOSTNAME[4]="icculus-wireless"
#DHCP_KEEPRESOLV[4]="yes"
#DHCP_KEEPNTP[4]="yes"
#DHCP_KEEPGW[4]="yes"
#DHCP_IPADDR[4]=""
WLAN_ESSID[1]=SPEEDTOUCH6E9193
WLAN_MODE[1]=Managed
##WLAN_RATE[4]="54M auto"
##WLAN_CHANNEL[4]="auto"
##WLAN_KEY[4]="D5AD1F04ACF048EC2D0B1C80C7"
WLAN_IWPRIV[1]="AuthMode=WPAPSK EncrypType=TKIP WPAPSK=AD26A55618 TxRate=0"
WLAN_WPA[1]="wpa_supplicant"
#WLAN_WPADRIVER[4]="ndiswrapper"[/HTML]

Rebooted, watched the messages scroll by, keeping an eye on the lights of the card. Lights flashed on and off when dhcpcd probed the card, showing the hw address. Once logged in, iwconfig ra0 showed
[HTML]
ra0 RT2500 Wireless ESSID:"" Nickname:"thinkpad"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.412 GHz Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power:0 dBm
RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Encryption keyff
Link Quality=0/100 Signal level=-120 dBm Noise level:-192 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0[/HTML]

The lights on the card were still off. I tried using iwconfig and ifconfig to manually put the correct options in the system, which worked but still nothing. I even went so far as to use the Wireless Network configuration in the Control Center, pointing it to the rc.inet1.conf file. Problem is, that only works when I start X and manually press the activate button at 'configuration to load' but still the card won't activate. I do get the following:
[HTML]
ra0 RT2500 Wireless ESSID:"SPEEDTOUCH6E9193" Nickname:"thinkpad"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.412 GHz Bit Rate=11 Mb/s Tx-Power:0 dBm
RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Encryption key:AD26-A556-18 Security mode:restricted
Link Quality=0/100 Signal level=-120 dBm Noise level:-193 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0[/HTML]

Right now, I'm working with a cat5 cable attached to the machine. I'm getting very discouraged. The only thing I did differently this time, is as stated, also installing kernel-generic from the 2.6.13 folder. I'm thinking that that is probably the reason why the card won't activate but how that would be possible, I'm at a loss. For the rest, I get the same problems as before; even with the edited conf. files, the configuration doesn't seem to be loaded.

One other thing that could be part of the problem is that the dvd on which Slackware 10.2 resides, is one I got from Linux Magazine and is not purely a Slack dvd. This isn't the first time I've tried Slack but every time, there is another problem that really stumps me, even though a lot of fellow Slackers here have helped me out and there are tons of 'how-to's' out there regarding these problems, like the one with the scroll-wheel. I have to wonder why, with Ralink having open-sourced the drivers, it's not been implemented as a module, just like a lot of other wireless modules in the kernel. As it stands, I'll probably wait for Slack 11 and see if that works a bit better.

Thanks again for your patience and help, guys. It's much appreciated and shows that Linux-users, Slackers in particular, are a helpful bunch.
 
Old 08-14-2006, 03:13 PM   #13
cwwilson721
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What, EXACTLY, did you type when you made the ralink drivers?

The linr should say
Code:
make -C /usr/src/linux SUBDIRS=$PWD modules
 
Old 08-14-2006, 03:31 PM   #14
Alien Bob
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Hi

If you add parameters to rc.wireless.conf. like
Code:
ESSID="SPEEDTOUCH6E9193"
MODE="MANAGED"
KEY="AD26A55618"
you don't need to add these same parameters (witht their WLAN_ prefix) to rc.inet1.conf. You can do either one or the other. If both files contain a value for the same parameter, the value in rc.inet1.conf will override the value in rc.wireless.conf.

Some questions/remarks:
Quote:
KEY="AD26A55618"
A WEP key like this should be a series of 26 HEX characters (0123456789abcdef) if you use 128bit WEP (look in rc.wireless.conf for several examples) or provide an ASCII string (a readable passphrase usually). The format in which these are configured is different.

This is a HEX WEP key definition:
Code:
KEY="4b7b4e23233b3d6a5954274375"
while this is a WEP key defined by a passphrase:
Code:
KEY="s:mysecretstring"
See the difference? The "s:" tells iwconfig that an ASCII string follows instead of HEX characters.
Your own value definition fits neither of the two. Not only that, but the remainder of your configuration shows you really want to use WPA:
Quote:
WLAN_IWPRIV[1]="AuthMode=WPAPSK EncrypType=TKIP WPAPSK=AD26A55618 TxRate=0"
WLAN_WPA[1]="wpa_supplicant"
So the advice would be to get rid of those "KEY=...." statements.
Furthermore, the rt2500 driver does not use wpa_supplicant for the WPA support, so you should leave out that second line. The first line is OK, provided you add a 63 HEX-character WPA key there in place of the AD26A55618...
That leaves something like:
Code:
IFNAME[1]="ra0"
IPADDR[1]=""
NETMASK[1]=""
USE_DHCP[1]="yes"
WLAN_ESSID[1]=SPEEDTOUCH6E9193
WLAN_MODE[1]=Managed
WLAN_IWPRIV[1]="AuthMode=WPAPSK EncrypType=TKIP WPAPSK=96389dc66eaf7e6efd5b5523ae43c7925ff4df2f8b7099495192d44a774fda16"
while removing all your configuration from rc.wireless.conf. Remember to not use the settings in RT2500STA.dat (remove that file) if you want Slackware to configure the card using the rc conf files.

Eric
 
Old 08-14-2006, 03:35 PM   #15
Alien Bob
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Quote:
copied the serialmonkey drivers...
Or use my SlackBuild / Slackware package instead : http://www.slackware.com/~alien/slackbuilds/rt2500/

Eric
 
  


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