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View Full Version : [ubuntu] RT2870 usb stick works with GDM, but not without


kellner
December 21st, 2008, 10:54 AM
I am trying to connect the D-LINK DWA-140 wireless usb adapter to the D-LINK DIR-635 router, with WPA2 encryption.

This works with the rt2870sta module on Intrepid Ibex within Gnome, using the Network Manager applet.

Problem is: I want to reconfigure the computer to a server within the local network. No graphical interface, no X running, just a LAMP setup with ssh access.

So the challenge is to make the wlan configuration work at startup, without Gnome. I haven’t been able to achieve this and would appreciate any help – especially, if someone could post a working configuration file RTA2870.DAT!

I downloaded the latest driver from http://www.ralinktech.com, built and installed it, following instructions in the README file.

The module rt2870sta is properly loaded at boot-time and shows up under usbcore with lsmod. So this much is covered – it’s just the connection that doesn’t work without GDM, so there must be something wrong with the parameters I entered in the configuration files.

The router is set to DHCP mode with 192.168.0.1.

/etc/network/interfaces contains:
iface ra0 inet dhcp
auto ra0

The wireless parameters are stored in /etc/Wireless/RT2870STA/RT2870STA.dat (also tried moving this into /etc/Wireless/, but this didn’t help).
These are the parameters I changed in the *.dat file:

SSID=myessid
AuthMode=WPA
EncrypType=TKIP
WPAPSK=my_wpa2_key_in_hex

I also have a wpa_supplicant.conf in /etc, but this doesn’t seem to be necessary (removed it – no change).

iwconfig shows the device ra0 with the proper ESSID and Nickname, but Access Point “not associated”.

ifconfig shows ra0 without an IP address, and a device ra0:avahi with IP 169.254.9.199.

ifdown ra0, followed by ifup ra0 has DHCPDISCOVER on ra0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 time out.

I also tried using a static address (192.168.0.198), but to no avail. The connection with the AP just isn’t established, even though iwlist scan shows the AP with a sufficiently strong signal.

I suspect that something is wrong with the way I entered the wpa2-psk key in the *.dat file.

I tried various possibilities:

1.) enter hex key in WPAPSK
2.) do not enter anything in WPAPSK, set DefaultKeyID=1, Key1Type=0, Key1Str=my_key_in_hex, or Key1Type=1 and Key1Str=”my_key_in_ascii”. Both settings resulted in error messages that the key didn’t have the right length (it’s 8 in ascii, 64 in hex).

Boot protocol ends with: “eth0: link is not ready”.

As I said: the strange thing is that it works within the GUI, but not from the command-line.

Thanks in advance for any hints how to resolve this,

kellner
December 22nd, 2008, 03:21 PM
I managed to get it to work in the end.

1.) When compiling the driver, change settings in os/linux/config.mk to:

HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT=y
HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=n

2.) completely remove NetworkManager:

sudo apt-get –purge remove network-manager network-manager-gnome

3.) use wpa supplicant: edit /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf according to the network's setup

4.) enter use of wpa supplicant in /etc/network/interfaces:

iface ra0 inet dhcp
wpa-driver wext
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

That's it.