Most dangerous thing in the world: Linux newbie with a wireless network adapter HELP!

[Falconeer]

Greetings!
I've been working on installing Fedora Core 6 on my machine for some time now. I have the install working, but I'm having problems getting the network adapter recognized. Any help would be appreciated. I have kernel 2.6.18-1.2798.fc6.

The adapter in question is a Linksys WUSB54GS. From what I see on http://linux-wless.passys.nl I can use the Ralink Tech RT73 driver. I downloaded the driver (RT73_Linux_STA_Drv1.0.3.6), logged on as root, and following the instructions as per the README (using the kernel 2.6 options where appropriate):

1> $tar -xvzf RT73_Linux_STA_Drv_x.x.x.x.tar.gz
go to "./RT73_Linux_STA_Drv_x.x.x.x/Module" directory.

Executed from /root/Desktop - no problems


2> $cp Makefile.4 ./Makefile # [kernel 2.4]
or
$cp Makefile.6 ./Makefile # [kernel 2.6]

did Makefile.6 version, No problems (file already exists, overwrote)

3> [kernel 2.4]
$chmod 755 Configure
$make config # config build linux os version

Didn't do, 2.4 specific?

4> $make all # compile driver source code

Executed, got a couple of warnings about variables not being used, no errors

5> $cp rt73.bin /etc/Wireless/RT73STA/ # copy firmware

/etc/Wireless/RT73STA/ directory did not exist; I created it and copied the file

6> $dos2unix rt73sta.dat
$cp rt73sta.dat /etc/Wireless/RT73STA/rt73sta.dat
# !!!check if it is a binary file before loading !!!

Executed, no problems. rt73sta.dat is text file containing config items

7> $load
#[kernel 2.4]
# $/sbin/insmod rt73.o
# $/sbin/ifconfig rausb0 inet YOUR_IP up

#[kernel 2.6]
# $/sbin/insmod rt73.ko
# $/sbin/ifconfig rausb0 inet YOUR_IP up

This is the part which gets me. There's a file called load in the modules directory that looks to be a script to execute the above commands. Here are the contents:
/sbin/insmod rt73.o
/sbin/ifconfig rausb0 inet 192.168.5.234 up
/sbin/route add default gw 192.168.5.254

I've tried both executing as a script and manually entering the commands. The first line seems to execute correctly, i.e. the first time there was no return code or error, subsequent times it says module already loaded.

However when I try to run the /sbin/ifconfig line it says:
SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
rausb0: unknown interface: No such device
rausb0: unknown interface: No such device

I'm at a loss as how to proceed.

lsusb reports:
Bus 005 Device 004: ID 13b1:0020 Linksys
which is the correct id for the Ralink driver.

Any and all thoughts would be most appreciated.

Regards,
John E.

[Dies]

I'm not good with wireless so I'll probably be of little help, but what does iwconfig say?
You need to su - to run that command.

[Falconeer]

Originally Posted by Dies

I'm not good with wireless so I'll probably be of little help, but what does iwconfig say?
You need to su - to run that command.

Thanks for the offer!

Here's what I get:
(logged on as root)
lo no wireless extensions
sit0 no wireless extensions

Everywhere I go I see things about updating kernels and such. Then they say connect to yum... well that's a bit difficult when the connectivity is what's not working.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

John E.

[Dies]

Originally Posted by Falconeer

Everywhere I go I see things about updating kernels and such. Then they say connect to yum... well that's a bit difficult when the connectivity is what's not working.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

John E.

Well you don't necessarily have to have the machine that you're trying to get working connected for these things, since you have internet access with another machine you can always download the needed RPM's and driver then burn to a CD.

To use ndiswrapper I think you would only need about 5 rpm's with the largest one being the kernel at +/- 16M.

You may be better off just using the windows driver with the kmod package from the Livna repo, if possible.

Check out this site, but remember you don't have to install this from source, you can DL the rpm's from Livna.

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

What version is it?

Also are you sure you got the right kernel, there was a bug in Anaconda that sometimes installs the wrong kernel, yeah oops. Run this to find out:

rpm -qa 'kernel*' --queryformat "%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}.%{ARCH}\n"|sort

[Falconeer]

Originally Posted by Dies

Well you don't necessarily have to have the machine that you're trying to get working connected for these things, since you have internet access with another machine you can always download the needed RPM's and driver then burn to a CD.

To use ndiswrapper I think you would only need about 5 rpm's with the largest one being the kernel at +/- 16M.

You may be better off just using the windows driver with the kmod package from the Livna repo, if possible.

Check out this site, but remember you don't have to install this from source, you can DL the rpm's from Livna.

http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/

What version is it?

Also are you sure you got the right kernel, there was a bug in Anaconda that sometimes installs the wrong kernel, yeah oops. Run this to find out:

rpm -qa 'kernel*' --queryformat "%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}.%{ARCH}\n"|sort

I'm trying to avoid ndiswrapper as the RPMs I've seen are for kernel versions I don't have. I ran the rpm -qa command you gave and got:

kernel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6,i686
kernel-devel-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6,i686
kernel-headers-2.6.18-1.2798.fc6,i386

My last install I used Linux i686.