how to: ralink rt2860 from source

**maestrobwh1** · 08-25-2009, 07:59 PM

I have an Asus EEE-Box with the ralink rt2860sta wireless card. Kernel 2.6.30 and later support this but if you are using 2.6.28 it will not; however, the linux driver from the ralink site does compile and install easily enough for any of the kernels previous to 2.6.30:

http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Hom...ort/Linux.html

Code:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

untar the file
open a terminal and cd to the untarred directory - you'll get a random make error after the module is compiled and it seems irrelevant

Code:

make 
sudo make install
sudo modprobe rt2860sta
sudo /etc/init.d/network-manager stop
sudo ifconfig ra0 up
sudo iwconfig ra0 essid any
sudo dhclient ra0

You have to stop network-manager or dhclient will hang and time out. If you use your own essid, for some reason the same thing happens.

This might be of help to others - wireless ralink devices that use interface ra0 do not show up with the version of network manager in Lenny.

Known issue - remove networkmanager, install wicd In the first tab under scripts, add this in the pre-connect field

Code:

iwconfig ra0 essid any

or it will hang trying to find an ip address. I do not know why this is and it might just be my router, as it seems to happen on half of my machines running different versions of linux.

There might be a way to manually configure a file in network manager, but I always found it a bit more fussy than wicd anyway.[/code]

**Vipin** · 09-08-2009, 07:48 PM

Hi I am trying to port the RT2860 on xtensa kernel. I am able to enumerate this card on mini pci slot and able to read write registers.

There is a problem when I try to bring it up ra0 interface.
We are getting some PCI errors - error message " BBP(viaMCU=1) read R1 fail"or
"H2M_MAILBOX still hold by MCU". Any idea what might be the problem or in which direction to debug here?

**maestrobwh1** · 09-08-2009, 08:50 PM

? I wish I could help, but my expertise ends with the above. I am unfamiliar with the xtensa processor.

It is a very odd message, as it seems like you have no issue building or inserting the module?

I used the ralink source, but there is a source package in the repos for the eee in debian lenny.

rt2860-source.