Slackware 13.0. RT2500 wireless no longer working

vdemuth · 09-26-2009, 02:45 AM

Hi people,

So, I have upgraded to Slackware 13.0 and am having real problems with wireless access. All the usual checks have been done. i.e. lsmod shows all the correct modules loaded. Ifconfig shows the wireless I/F (wlan0) yet iwlist scan returns no results. Niether does WICD find any networks.

But, if I rmmod rt2500pci and rt2x00pci the modprobe them again, the wirless will occasionally burst into life (perhaps 60% success rate).

As a workaround at the moment, I have downgraded the kernel to the stock Slack 12.2 one, (2.6.27.31) and with this arrangement there are no issues as everything works as expected, but if I then replace that kernel with the latest Slack one i.e. 2.6.29.6. Then again no wireless.

So, any one any ideas why this should be happening with the latest incarnation of the kernel, and moreover, any suggestions to put it right?

TIA for any suggestions

the3dfxdude · 09-26-2009, 11:02 AM

I was looking at this this morning. Try reverting the following patch.

See also:
http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13362

commit 7e0986c17f695952ce5d61ed793ce048ba90a661
Author: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>
Date: Sun Apr 19 13:22:11 2009 +0200

mac80211: fix basic rate bitmap calculation

"mac80211: fix basic rates setting from association response"
introduced a copy/paste error.

Unfortunately, this not just leads to wrong data being passed
to the driver but is remotely exploitable for some hardware or
driver combinations.

Signed-off-by: Johannes Berg <johannes@sipsolutions.net>
Cc: stable@kernel.org [2.6.29]
Signed-off-by: John W. Linville <linville@tuxdriver.com>

gegechris99 · 09-26-2009, 03:09 PM

Hello,

No problem for me with Slackware 13.0 32-bit.

Code:

$ lspci
...
00:09.0 Network controller: RaLink RT2500 802.11g Cardbus/mini-PCI (rev 01)
...

Code:

$ lsmod | grep rt2500pci
rt2500pci              14780  0
rt2x00pci               7004  1 rt2500pci
rt2x00lib              26972  2 rt2500pci,rt2x00pci
eeprom_93cx6            1692  1 rt2500pci

As the command "iwlist wlan0 scan" brings no result, you might like to try:

Code:

/sbin/ifconfig wlan0 up

to bring up again the interface.