10.3 & Rt2500 Wireless Howto

The rt2500pci driver that comes with openSUSE 10.3 works somewhat, but it requires one to login as root and do "iwlist scan" after each boot; and, on occasion, I have had to issue "modprobe rt2500pci" to get it to work.

What follows is what worked for me in getting the SerialMonkey rt2500 Daily CVS driver to work:

1st go here: http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index....title=Downloads and download the rt2500 (PCI/PCMCIA) CVS hourly tarball; move it to it's own folder & untar it (all I did was click on the tarball and copy over the extracted folder).

2nd using Yast, make sure you have kernel-source, gcc and make installed.

Now let's build the kernel module, but 1st we need to prepare the kernel:
In a terminal as root:
Issue the following commands and give the computer time to finish the operation, then issue the next one:

cd /usr/src/linux

make mrproper

make cloneconfig

make modules_prepare

Now we are ready to do some serious compiling; let's build the rt2500 module:
Still in the terminal as root:
Again, issue the following commands and give the computer time to finish the operation, then issue the next one:

rmmod rt2500pci** <-- unloads the SUSE kernel module

cd /pathtofolderwith/rt2500/module (like /home/jim/rt2500/rt2500-cvs-dateofbuild/Module)

make

make install

modprobe rt2500 <-- loads the rt2500 kernel module

Almost there:
Now go to Yast > Network Devices & check the setup for your card; every wireless extension has to be accurate, DNS, gateway, etc has to be entered and they are all on separate tabs.
New to 10.3 is a driver context menu on one of those tabs for the driver; make sure that is set for the rt2500 module or it will simply reload the rt2500pci module. Also make it effective at boot and don't forget to set the MTU. What I'm trying to say is look at all the tabs and context menus and make sure that the needed config info is present. And, don't forget to turn on the firewall.
Save out of all that.

Finally, in a terminal as root, do "iwconfig"; hopefully you get 96/100 as I did

Have fun...See compiling is not that tough once you know how...

Thanks for this. For hardware supposedly "well-supported" on Linux the rt2xxx wireless cards certainly take a bunch of work to get to work.

One other hint I would add is: if you use WEP, you should you rutilt. It's a great little program for connectring to different wireless networks and even when I couldn't get my card to connect to my router in YaST in 10.2, rutilt worked like a charm.

Snakedriver,

Well done, a first class post.

I have had problems with suse and rt2500 based card since 10.1, often loading up other distros and running ok.

I always knew it was a driver issue.

I've been using pclinux for bout 3 months and then when 10.3 came out installed it, wifi worked once after first reboot and that was it, could not even pick up a signal.

Was thinking of going back to pclinux or ubuntu when I came across your article and bingo, wifi on 10.3 working a treat.

Thanks a million m8.

toe

http://www.vistaisrubbish.com

Hi there

I tried followoing the steps you gave to install the rt2x00 driver on opensuse 10.3, i however receive the following ouput after doing make in the cvs directory :

-----------------------------------------------------------------
make -C ../../../linux-2.6.22.9-0.4 O=../linux-2.6.22.9-0.4-obj/i386/default modules
CC [M] /home/itchy8me/Desktop/rt2x00-cvs-daily/rt2x00-cvs-2007101306/rt2x00dev.o
/home/itchy8me/Desktop/rt2x00-cvs-daily/rt2x00-cvs-2007101306/rt2x00dev.c: In function ‘rt2x00lib_stop_link_tuner’:
/home/itchy8me/Desktop/rt2x00-cvs-daily/rt2x00-cvs-2007101306/rt2x00dev.c:97: error: implicit declaration of function ‘cancel_delayed_work_sync’
/home/itchy8me/Desktop/rt2x00-cvs-daily/rt2x00-cvs-2007101306/rt2x00dev.c: In function ‘rt2x00lib_packetfilter_scheduled’:
/home/itchy8me/Desktop/rt2x00-cvs-daily/rt2x00-cvs-2007101306/rt2x00dev.c:434: error: ‘const struct ieee80211_ops’ has no member named ‘configure_filter’
/home/itchy8me/Desktop/rt2x00-cvs-daily/rt2x00-cvs-2007101306/rt2x00dev.c: In function ‘rt2x00lib_configuration_scheduled’:
/home/itchy8me/Desktop/rt2x00-cvs-daily/rt2x00-cvs-2007101306/rt2x00dev.c:445: error: ‘IEEE80211_ERP_CHANGE_PREAMBLE’ undeclared (first use in this function)
/home/itchy8me/Desktop/rt2x00-cvs-daily/rt2x00-cvs-2007101306/rt2x00dev.c:445: error: (Each undeclared identifier is reported only once
/home/itchy8me/Desktop/rt2x00-cvs-daily/rt2x00-cvs-2007101306/rt2x00dev.c:445: error: for each function it appears in.)
/home/itchy8me/Desktop/rt2x00-cvs-daily/rt2x00-cvs-2007101306/rt2x00dev.c: In function ‘rt2x00lib_probe_dev’:
/home/itchy8me/Desktop/rt2x00-cvs-daily/rt2x00-cvs-2007101306/rt2x00dev.c:1158: error: ‘IEEE80211_IF_TYPE_INVALID’ undeclared (first use in this function)
make[4]: *** [/home/itchy8me/Desktop/rt2x00-cvs-daily/rt2x00-cvs-2007101306/rt2x00dev.o] Error 1
make[3]: *** [_module_/home/itchy8me/Desktop/rt2x00-cvs-daily/rt2x00-cvs-2007101306] Error 2
make[2]: *** [modules] Error 2
make[1]: *** [modules] Error 2
make: *** [default] Error 2
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

do you perhaps know how i could solve the problem?

greets wernher

sorry

my mistake.. i downloaded the wrong CVS drivers.

greets wernher

I tried installing the latest CVS release and it works fine, however it does not work for any form of encryption for me such as WEP / WPA etc. I tried for several pain staking hours of different configurations etc and gave up and put 10.2 back on. It worked 1st time as always using the the rt2500-1.1-0-b4 driver ( does not compile on 10.3) but not letting it best me I reinstalled 10.3 tonight. It would appear that there is an error in the sanity.c file which was spotted by Psycho Dad here Serial Monkey, however upon testing this fix it did not work for me until I removed the previous install using ifdown wlan0 then modprobe -r rt2500
I then ran a make clean and added the new sanity.c file, then did a make and a make install. It still did not work until I disabled dhcp on my ethernet port ( but kept DHCP on my wirless card). I hope this saves someone some time

I went though this pain with 10.2, and went around the loop again with 10.3. In the end the rt2500 fix didn't do it for me. I've now gone back to the original supplied rt2500pci drivers, BUT, using "NetworkManager" (global options in the Network Device Dialogs) - working a treat now.

Suspect that SUSE guys have been concentrating on this interface and that the old ifup/down system is falling by the wayside????

Paul