Installing RaLink RT2500 Wireless drivers

[MicahCarrick]

Had a bit of trouble with this at first so I thought I would share how I got it working. I bought a cheapie wifi card from TigerDirect.com called a Tornado 122 which uses the RaLink RT2500 chipset.

The specifics are:

/sbin/lspci

03:08:0 Network Controller: RaLink RT2500 802.11g Cardbus/mini-PCI (rev 01)

/sbin/lspci -n

03:08:0 1814:0201 (rev 01)

I found Linux drivers on the ralink's website, however, I found this project to be a bit easier (handles some of the modprobe stuff and what have ya): http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/...itle=Main_Page
The file I used was: rt2500-1.1.0-b4.tar.gz

So first thing, I downloaded the devel package for my kernel:

yum install kernel-devel.x86_664

Then I extracted the tarbal and went into the module directory:

tar -xzf rt2500-1.1.0-b4.tar.gz
cd rt2500-1.1.0-b4/Module

Now, this code uses a deprecated include so I had to create a shell script to change all occurances of "linux/config.h" to "linux/autoconf.h". This shell script was put into a folder called "scripts" in my home directory.

~/scripts/fix_rt2500_driver.sh

#!/bin/bash
for fl in *.*; do
mv $fl $fl.old
sed 's/linux\/config.h/linux\/autoconf.h/g' $fl.old > $fl
rm -f $fl.old
done

I then ran the script in the Modules directory:

sh ~/scripts/fix_rt2500_driver.sh ./

And now the module builds fine:

make

The final step is to install it with the fedora-specific option:

make install-fedora

Should be all ready to setup now. You can do so in GNOME from 'System' > 'Administration' > 'Network'. Click 'New', select 'Wireless connection', and choose the 'RaLink RT2500 802.11g Cardbus/mini-PCI (wlan0)' and then just 'Forward' your way through the rest of the druid.

Cheers.

[sideways]

cool, although the script is a bit of overkill

linux/config.h only appears in Module/rt_config.h line 58, and the comment says you can just delete it which is all you have to do. config.h was removed in FC6 (well actually before that, but definitely gone with kernel supplied in FC6).

I use this wireless driver and find it pretty stable.

[Thetargos]

Actually the make install-fedora argument is no longer necessary. The installation will run depmod -aq to register the new modules just fine now.

[MicahCarrick]

Good to know. Thanks!

[Thetargos]

That behavior, however is only introduced in the b4 version, the b3 version still requires the make install-fedora argument (even though I doubt anyone will attempt to install -b3 now, I think it is important to note that)

[scuac]

When I first got my current computer a year ago, I first tried to install FC5 with a Ralink RT2500 based card. I just simply could not get it to work no matter what I tried. I gave up and installed Windows at that point. Now one year later it appears that the people at serialmonkey have advanced a bit with the driver (I did try their driver back then with no luck). I will give it another shot to install it on FC7 this time. Do the above instructions apply to FC7 x86_64 or are only for FC6?

Also, will they ever make RT2500 cards work out of the box on FC, or provide some easy rpm one can yum in the future? I found the whole wireless support on Linux always a detracting factor.

[A.Serbinski]

Then quit buying rt2500 cards and stick to Atheros. Couldn't be easier.

[A.Serbinski]

Notice the wireless plans for F7; http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Releas...relessFirmware