RT73

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1 Driver support
2 Kernel Configuration
3 rt2x00 driver
- 3.1 Portage
- 3.2 CVS
4 Official driver
- 4.1 extracting the file and compiling the driver
5 Troubleshooting
6 See also

Driver support

Please add your devices below. The subsystem id and numeric pci id can be found using lspci -vnn.

PCI ID	Subsystem PCI ID	Device name	RT73	RT73 (AMD64)	ndiswrapper	ndiswrapper (AMD64)
?	?	TP-LINK TL-WN321G (USB)	Yes	Yes	works with vanilla-sources-2.6.23.9	Not tested

Kernel Configuration

Linux Kernel Configuration: Wireless configuration

 Networking  --->
   [*] Networking support

   Wireless  --->
     <*> Improved wireless configuration API

The following is only used by very old drivers:

     --- Wireless extensions

The selection between the following two depends on the driver being used. The first is the new stack, the second is the old:

     < > Generic IEEE 802.11 Networking Stack (mac80211)
     <*> Generic IEEE 802.11 Networking Stack

     [ ]   Enable full debugging output
     ---   IEEE 802.11 WEP encryption (802.1x)
     <*>   IEEE 802.11i CCMP support
     <*>   IEEE 802.11i TKIP encryption
     <*>   Software MAC add-on to the IEEE 802.11 networking stack
     [ ]     Enable full debugging output
     [*]   Enable RAIODTAP headers for capibilities that can support it.

Turn on the following even if not using any of the drivers in the kernel:

 Device Drivers  --->
   Network device support  --->
     Wireless LAN  --->
       [*] Wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11)
       ... Select driver as needed if it's in the kernel source ...

The following should be on automatically by dependencies, but if not, turn it on:

 Cryptographic options  --->
   [*] Cryptographic API

rt2x00 driver

You can install RT73 either from portage or from the daily CVS release. After the installation, the card identifies itself as rausb0.

Note: The RT73 driver is now in mainline kernel as of 2.6.24.

Portage

Note: Ebuilds available in sabayon and sunrise overlays.

emerge -av rt73 rt73-firmware

CVS

Download the rt73-cvs-daily.tar.gz from [1].

Code: RT73 installation

tar zxvf rt73-cvs-daily.tar.gz
cd rt73-cvs-*/Module
make && make install
modprobe rt73

Official driver

extracting the file and compiling the driver

Download the official driver for RT73 USB RT2501USB (RT73: RT2571W/RT2573/RT2671.

#cp RT73_Linux_STA_Drv1.0.4.0.tar.gz /tmp/
#cd /tmp/
#tar zxvf RT73_Linux_STA_Drv1.0.4.0.tar.gz
#cd /tmp/RT73_Linux_STA_Drv1.0.4.0/Module/
#cp Makefile.6 ./Makefile

Note: you need to modify the Makefile to make the DEVICE(rausb0) to wlan0

# sudo -i
# chmod 755 Makefile
? vi Makefile
# type :%s/rausb0/wlan0/gc  # replace all rausb0 to wlan0
:wq! #save and quit

and also need to change ifcfg-rausb0 file to ifcfg-wlan0

# mv ifcfg-rausb0 ifcfg-wlan0

Okey, you can compile the driver NOW!

#make && make install

here is my output

make -C /lib/modules/2.6.23.9/build \
       INSTALL_MOD_DIR=extra SUBDIRS=/tmp/RT73_Linux_STA_Drv1.0.4.0/Module \
       modules_install
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.23.9'
INSTALL /tmp/RT73_Linux_STA_Drv1.0.4.0/Module/rt73.ko
DEPMOD  2.6.23.9
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-2.6.23.9'
Network device directory /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts
Module configuration file /etc/modprobe.conf
append 'alias wlan0 rt73' to /etc/modprobe.conf

Now, you need to do following commands

# modprobe rt73

Check if the driver been loaded

# dmesg | tail

if you see the info similar as below, that means you have loaded successfully

rt73 driver version - 1.0.4.0

change your mode to root, then run following commands

# mkdir -p /etc/Wireless/RT73STA/
# cp rt73.bin /etc/Wireless/RT73STA/
# dos2unix rt73sta.dat
# cp rt73sta.dat /etc/Wireless/RT73STA/rt73sta.dat

File: /etc/Wireless/RT73STA/rt73sta.dat

CountryRegion=0
CountryRegionABand=7
WirelessMode=0
SSID=Your_Wireless Name
NetworkType=Infra
Channel=6
AuthMode=WPAPSK
EncrypType=TKIP
DefaultKeyID=1
Key1Type=0
Key1Str=Your Password
Key2Type=0
Key2Str=
Key3Type=0
Key3Str=
Key4Type=0
Key4Str=
WPAPSK=the WPAPSK Passworkd
TxBurst=0
PktAggregate=0
TurboRate=0
WmmCapable=0
AckPolicy=0;0;0;0
BGProtection=0
IEEE80211H=0
TxRate=12
RTSThreshold=2347
FragThreshold=2346
PSMode=CAM
TxPreamble=0
AdhocOfdm=0
FastRoaming=0
RoamThreshold=70

Note: if you are unsure how to edit this section, you need to read this file /RT73_Linux_STA_Drv1.0.4.0/Module/README

Note: now you need to emerge wireless-tools net-wireless/wpa_supplicant. Before using those packages, you need to understand how to use wireless-tools & net-wireless/wpa_supplicant

Wireless Networking

#sudo emerge wireless-tools net-wireless/wpa_supplicant

use ifconfig to check whether you have got the wireless device, if not, you can use this command to bring it up ifconfig wlan0 up

#ifconfig

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:19:E0:18:8C:32 
         inet addr:10.1.1.15  Bcast:10.255.255.255  Mask:255.0.0.0
         inet6 addr: fe80::219:e0ff:fe18:8c32/64 Scope:Link
         UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
         RX packets:976 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
         TX packets:139 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
         collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
         RX bytes:867094 (846.7 Kb)  TX bytes:201182 (196.4 Kb)

# iwconfig wlan0 essid YOUR_WIRELESS_NAME
# iwconfig wlan0 key s:YOUR_WAP_PASSWORD

# iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.
eth0      no wireless extensions.
sit0      no wireless extensions.
wlan0  RT73 WLAN  ESSID:"YOUR_WIRELESS_NAME" 
         Mode:Managed  Frequency=2.412 GHz  Bit Rate=54 Mb/s  
         RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
         Encryption key:xxxx-xxx-xxx-xxxx
         Link Quality=0/100  Signal level:-121 dBm  Noise level:-115 dBm
         Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
         Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Note: unofficial driver can use scan function

# iwlist wlan0 scan (area for router ESSIDS) 
wlan0     Scan completed :
         Cell 01 - Address: 00:1B:11:15:01:73
                   ESSID:"MY_WIRELESS"
                   Mode:Managed
                   Channel:6
                   Encryption key:on
                   Bit Rates:0 kb/s

Note: The official driver cannot use scan function, i have no idea why!!

# iwlist wlan0 scan 
wlan0     Interface doesn't support scanning.

Okey, Finally, you need to edit two files

File: /etc/conf.d/net

modules=("wpa_supplicant")
wpa_supplicant_wlan0="-Dwext"
config_wlan0=("10.1.1.15 netmask 255.0.0.0")
routes_wlan0=("default via 10.1.1.1")

File: //etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
network={
  ssid="YOUR_WIRELESS_NAME"
  mode=1
  proto=WPA
  key_mgmt=WPA-NONE
  pairwise=NONE
  group=TKIP
  psk="YOUR_PASSWORD"

}

Note: Create a link corresponds to your network & boot-up

#cd /etc/init.d
#rc-update del net.eth0
* 'net.eth0' removed from the following runlevels: default
#ln -s net.lo net.wlan0
#rc-update add net.wlan0 default
* net.wlan0 added to runlevel default

File: /etc/init.d/net.wlan0 restart

 * Unmounting network filesystems ...               [ ok ]
 * Stopping sshd ...                                         [ ok ]
 * Stopping wlan0
 *   Bringing down wlan0
 *     Stopping dhcpcd on wlan0 ...                    [ ok ]
 *     Shutting down wlan0 ...                           [ ok ]
 * Starting wlan0
 *   Bringing up wlan0
 *     10.1.1.15                                               [ ok ]
 *   Adding routes
 *     default via 10.1.1.1 ...                              [ ok ]
 * Mounting network filesystems ...                    [ ok ]
 * Starting sshd ...                                           [ ok ]

PING 10.1.1.1 (10.1.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=1 ttl=255 time=1014 ms
64 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=2 ttl=255 time=4.61 ms
64 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=3 ttl=255 time=2.59 ms
64 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=4 ttl=255 time=2.70 ms
64 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=5 ttl=255 time=3.26 ms
64 bytes from 10.1.1.1: icmp_seq=6 ttl=255 time=2.68 ms
--- 10.1.1.1 ping statistics ---
6 packets transmitted, 6 received, 0% packet loss, time 5034ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 2.591/171.648/1014.025/376.723 ms, pipe 2

Troubleshooting

Note: my wireles USB cannot work with rt2x00.serialmonkey.com RT73 USB driver