Wireless support

Ok, now there is an Ubuntu system installed on the old Dell Inspiron 8000. Only one thing remains: some kind of wireless support. So, to this end, I have bought an Edimax wireless usb stick: EW-7318Ug.

Gutsy default

By default Gutsy loads the rt73usb module when the usb stick is inserted but I was not able to use this configuration in order to connect to the wireless network even if I have tried various things. I can see a wlan0 wireless enabled device but I cannot scan or connect to the network.

Alternate driver

Next try was to download and compile the RT73_Linux_STA_Drv1.0.4.0.tar.gz from Edimax website:

Install required kernel headers and build tools

apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential

Compile the module

tar xvfz RT73_Linux_STA_Drv1.0.4.0.tar.gz
cd RT73_Linux_STA_Drv1.0.4.0/Module
cp Makefile.6 Makefilemake

Copy configuration files

mkdir -pv /etc/Wireless/RT73STA
cp -v rt73.bin /etc/Wireless/RT73STA/
dos2unix rt73sta.dat -f
apt-get install tofrodos
dos2unix rt73sta.dat -f
cp -v rt73sta.dat /etc/Wireless/RT73STA/rt73sta.dat

Copy the module

mkdir /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/usb/netcp rt73.ko /lib/modules/2.6.22-14-generic/kernel/drivers/usb/net/

Remove autoloaded modules. In order to avoid these modules to be loaded in the future they must be added to the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist one per line

rmmod rt73usbrmmod rt2500usb
rmmod rt2x00usb

Insert new module. In order to be loaded at restart add it to /etc/modules as a new line.

modprobe rt73

Now I can see a rausb0 device but the network-manager will detect this card as a wired device (see BUG). This means that I will have to configure the card by hand. Not a problem. This is a simple script which does the needed configurations for a WPA with PSK network:


<span>iwconfig</span> 
iwpriv rausb0 set NetworkType=Infra
iwpriv rausb0 set AuthMode=WPAPSK
iwpriv rausb0 set EncrypType=TKIP
iwpriv rausb0 set SSID="replace with your SSID"
iwpriv rausb0 set WPAPSK='replace with your PSK'
#if you are using static ip use this
ifconfig rausb0 192.168.0.118 up
#if you are using dhcp use this
dhclient
<p>Now the wireless connection works ok :)</p>

Comments:

Dmitri -

Hi! I found your tutorial very useful. Would you please insert spaces and LF to for better readability. /Dmitri


len -

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