Ralink 5390 wifi card in Ubuntu 10.10 64 bit

Problem:
Got a brand new HP laptop - HP g62x. Installed ubuntu 10.10 and found that I do not have a wlan interface as one would expect with an active wireless connection.

Thanks to
Great discussion on similar work here @ http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1600498. Just a different card.

Solution:
I used the above thread to do my work - banged my head against the wall a couple of times but it was fun :). I am listing down steps that finally worked for me. But before that, my configurations:

• Ubuntu 10.10
• 64 bit
• WPA2 wireless network
• OS was freshly installed and there was no specific customization prior to this
• RaLink Device 5390. (use lspci to see your model number)

1. Download the driver from ralinktech.com --> Software --> Linux
2. Unzip the download zip file anywhere. I did it in the default Downloads directory
3. cd to the 2010_xxx extracted directory
4. cd os/linux/
5. Edit the config.mk file as below:
   HAS_ATE=y (no change, it was originally as is)
   HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT=y (no change, it was originally as is)
   HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=y (no change, it was originally as is)
   HAS_ANTENNA_DIVERSITY_SUPPORT=y originally was n -- this was the only thing I modified)
6. Go back to the 2010_xx directory
7. run command 'make'
8. Make sure 'make compile' exists without errors. I got an error "too many arguments to format" towards the end of the compile but it did compile successfully eventually. And so I ignored the errors. You would see ***errors*** if the compile is not successful. In which, something went wrong and you may need to tweak the makefile or config.mk files before compile is successful.
9. run command 'make install' as root. This is not listed in the README_STA_pci file that comes with downloaded driver zip file. This takes of copying the file to /lib/modules/2.6.35-22-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rt5390sta.ko. running depmod, creating /etc/Wireless/... folder.
10. Edit the /etc/modules and add the line at the end of this file
    rt5390sta
11. Edit the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf and add the below line to it...
    blacklist rt2800pci
12. Reboot and you should see an ra0 interface when you run the command 'ifconfig'
13. You may have to run '/etc/init.d/network-manager restart' command to have it show in the first go.
14. Once, the wireless icon shows up, look for your wireless SSID and there you go surfing :)

Thanks a lot man.

How to edit the /etc/modprobe to add the line rt5390sta ???

I am waiting for your answer

Thanks..

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by waseemriyaz

Thanks a lot man.

How to edit the /etc/modprobe to add the line rt5390sta ???

I am waiting for your answer

Thanks..

---

Sorry, that should be modules - typo :)
sudo gedit /etc/modules

I actually skipped step 9 and it worked fine for me. Thanks a lot. I thought I could never use ubuntu on hp g62x without wireless...

the only change I made was , for make file to successfully compile without errors, you need to login to root then run make file.... then it will compile without errors..

glad my post helped. The "make install" generally does the whole trick so i guess after some more feedback, i could be confident that this is actually optional. I also have it disabled for me and it still works :)

Thanks for this!

Just did a fresh install 10.04 and followed the steps, worked great....then when I updated to the latest kernel it stopped working and had to redo make/make install. So it may have to be done every time?

Yes. i guess. thats the sad part :(. However, no other configurations. just do
make
and
sudo make install

My sound is not working . Can any1 suggest me .. Mine is same hp G62x...

My sound card on Hp-G62x works out of box on 10.10. Is your sound card the same?

#:~$ lshw -C sound
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
PCI (sysfs)
*-multimedia
description: Audio device
product: 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1b
bus info: pci@0000:00:1b.0
version: 05
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master cap_list
configuration: driver=HDA Intel latency=0
resources: irq:45 memory:d4400000-d4403fff
#:~$

BTW, you might get better responses on the Multimedia forum.

I am having connection issues....will randomly loose the connection and then the only way to reconnect is close the screen and then once opened it is instantly connected again. Any one have this issue or how to fix?