RaLink RT61 Wireless Solved

[judgekaster]

This is a mini-howto setup the RaLink RT61 Wireless.

August 2, 2006 update: Thanks to reharpernc's post, I think a solution to the "No DHCPOFFERS Received" error is now available. See further down for a summary.

It seems several Ubuntu users have posted on the forums their troubles with setting up the RT61 Wireless as this is not properly identified and configured by Ubuntu Breezy 5.10. I myself encountered the same problems and had to google around for a solution.

I got it up and running and would want to share my experience.

(a) "lspci" identifies the RT61 wireless chipset as

0000:01:02.0 Network controller: RaLink: Unknown device 0302

(b) If you have this hardware, obtain the RT61 driver from the RaLink website:

http://www.ralinktech.com/drivers/Li...1.0.3.0.tar.gz

(c) Untar and follow the instructions in the included readme file. Basic steps would be:

$ sudo cp Makefile.6 Makefile
$ sudo make all
$ sudo mkdir /etc/Wireless/RT61STA/
$ sudo cp *.bin /etc/Wireless/RT61STA/.
$ sudo cp rt61sta.dat /etc/Wireless/RT61STA/.

(d) Edit the /etc/Wireless/RT61STA/rt61sta.dat as a binary file. The recommended way of doing this is:

$ cd /etc/Wireless/RT61STA
$ sudo vi -b rt61sta.dat

Enter the necessary information to access your network. Refer to the readme file for options.

(e) copy the rt61.ko driver file to the modules directory then load it

$ sudo cp rt61.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/.
$ sudo depmod
$ sudo modprobe rt61

(Note that the rt61 will automatically be loaded the next time you boot your Ubuntu machine.)

(e) check if the driver was loaded

$ iwconfig

should show information for "ra0"

(f) connect to the network

to set a static IP address, do:

$ sudo ifconfig ra0 {IP ADDRESS} up

to obtain an IP address from your DHCP server:

$ sudo dhclient ra0

(g) write a short script containing (f) to run at startup.

$ sudo gedit /etc/init.d/rt61up

Enter the following lines:

#!/bin/sh
echo "Bringing up ra0"
# obtain an IP address from a DHCP server
dhclient ra0

# alternately, you can uncomment the following line to set a static IP address
# ifconfig ra0 {IP ADDRESS} up
# if you uncomment the line above, make sure to comment line #4

make it executable:

$ cd /etc/init.d
$ sudo chmod +x rt61up

(h) make a symbolic link in /etc/rcS.d so that it will run at boot up

$ cd /etc/rcS.d
$ sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/rt61up S33rt61up

That's it!

Some additional notes:

(a) Do not use the "Networking" tool (network-admin). You will get a lock-up at boot time at the point where the network interfaces are bieng configured. If you have used the Networking tool, you will have to comment out the entries in the file "/etc/network/interfaces." to do this:

$ sudo vi /etc/network/interfaces   # replace vi with your editor of choice (nano, gedit, kate etc.)

it should look like this:

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

#iface ra0 inet dhcp
#wireless-essid xxxx
#auto ra0

(b) rt61 in Dapper

Ubuntu 6.06 (Dapper Drake) comes with the rt61 driver. However, you will still have to copy the firmware files to /etc/Wireless/RT61STA.

1. Download http://www.ralinktech.com/drivers/Li...mware_V1.2.zip
and copy it to /tmp then do the following:

$ cd /tmp
$ unzip RT61_Firmware_V1.2.zip
$ cd RT61_Firmware_V1.2
$ sudo mkdir /etc/Wireless/RT61STA
$ cp *.bin /etc/Wireless/RT61STA/.

2. Download the attached rt61sta.dat.tar.gz and copy it to /tmp then do the following:

$ cd /tmp
$ tar zxvf rt61sta.dat.tar.gz -C /etc/Wireless/RT61STA

Edit /etc/Wireless/RT61STA/rt61sta.dat as shown in (d) above.

3. Do steps (f) to (h) above.

(c) "No DHCPOFFERS Received"

A lot of people have posted in this thread complaining about the error "No DHCPOFFERS Received" error when they try "sudo dhclient ra0". I myself have encountered this error when trying to connect to one of the APs in the building where I work. However, I couldn't find a solution and thus could not reply to their posts. Until I read reharpernc's post which suggested using "iwpriv" instead of "iwconfig". [For more information on "iwpriv", type "man iwpriv" in your terminal.]

So for people who have encountered this problem, try:

sudo iwpriv ra0 set NetworkType=Infra
sudo iwpriv ra0 set AuthMode=SHARED
sudo iwpriv ra0 set EncrypType=WEP
sudo iwpriv ra0 set DefaultKeyID=1
sudo iwpriv ra0 set Key1=<my wep key>
sudo iwpriv ra0 set SSID=<my essid>

then try to connect to your AP with

sudo dhclient ra0

If this works for you, you might want to include the above lines in the "/etc/init.d/rt61up" script so that it will run at startup. Please do post a reply if whether this worked for you or not.

That's it!

# Edited Sun Jun 4 18:53:32 PHT 2006 in response to posts made in this thread. Thanks to all the inputs!

(a) made some steps more newbie-friendly

(b) instead of making the symbolic link in /etc/rc2.d, suggested that it be made in /etc/rcS.d

(c) added note about not using network-admin

(d) added note about installing in dapper

# Edited Monday, 19 June 2006 07:55 PM

(a) under Dapper instructions, corrected #3, should be steps (f) to (h) instead of (f) to (g). thanks to ferenczi and KuifjePDX

# Edited Wed Aug 2 20:22:03 PHT 2006

(a) added possible solution to "No DHCPOFFERS Received" problem.

[Henry Rayker]

I get to the part about the rt61.ko copy and everything just falls apart. I get an error "No such file or directory" referring to rt61.ko...could there be anything that was omitted?

[melquiades]

many thanks for the mini-howto, it worked perfectly for my setup. kudos, kudos!

[morpheus2485]

i'm trying to complete the "make all" command but i get the following error:
"/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.12-9-386/scripts/gcc-version.sh: line 11: gcc-3.4: command not found".

i've installed the kernel headers that came on my kubuntu install cd and all of the gcc, gcc-4.0, c++, etc compilers i could find on my install cd

any help?

[morpheus2485]

maybe if someone could just e-mail me the binary i could get it going that way.... morpheus2485@gmail.com

[melquiades]

what name should I put in the symbolink link in /etc/rc2.d pointing to /etc/init.d/rt61ip ? I tried S15rt61, and after that my system would freeze on bootup, specifically on the Configuring network interfaces portion.

[h0me5k1n]

Originally Posted by morpheus2485 i'm trying to complete the "make all" command but i get the following error: "/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.12-9-386/scripts/gcc-version.sh: line 11: gcc-3.4: command not found". i've installed the kernel headers that came on my kubuntu install cd and all of the gcc, gcc-4.0, c++, etc compilers i could find on my install cd any help?

You need to install gcc-3.4 (the kernel is compiled with gcc-3.4 not gcc-4.0 I believe) and build-essential

sudo apt-get install gcc-3.4 build-essential

The instructions for editing the rt61sta.dat to get encryption (WPA/WEP) to work are in the tar.gz file from ralink too.

[Stone123]

ok i fixed my rt61 on dwl-g510 rev c1 , fw :5 ,
EDITED(i could not get bootup connection with interface so i created a boot sript (and there is nothing more in /etc/network/interfaces file only lo loop )) and i removed wifi-radar , that was freezing the system or gdm in dapper

:~$ sudo gedit /etc/init.d/xrt61
CODE:

#!/bin/bash sudo /sbin/modprobe rt61 sleep 3 sudo /sbin/dhclient ra0

:~$ cd /etc/init.d
:~$ sudo update-rc.d xrt61 default
:~$sudo chmod 777 /etc/init.d/xrt61

Unlink runlevel 0 and 6.
:~$ sudo rm /etc/rc6.d/K20xrt61
:~$sudo rm /etc/rc0.d/K20xrt61
//or just do ls /etc/rc6.d/ |grep xrt61 and ls /etc/rc0.d/ |grep xrt61 and remove them with rm


#cat /etc/network/interfaces :

#empty

and i have :

cat /etc/modprobe.d/rt61d

alias ra0 rt61

$sudo cat /etc/Wireless/RT61STA/rt61sta.dat

[Default] CountryRegion=0 CountryRegionABand=7 WirelessMode=0 SSID=Default #essid NetworkType=Infra Channel=0 AuthMode=OPEN # open buy router settings @ http://192.168.0.1/ EncrypType=WEP # i use wep so that is changed DefaultKeyID=1 Key1Type=0 # 0 = password in hex Key1Str=7274363164 #key in hex Key2Type=1 # 1 = password in ascii Key2Str=rt61d #key in ascii Key3Type=0 Key3Str= Key4Type=0 Key4Str= #WPAPSK=abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz TxBurst=0 PktAggregate=0 TurboRate=0 WmmCapable=0 AckPolicy1=0 AckPolicy2=0 AckPolicy3=0 AckPolicy4=0 BGProtection=0 ShortSlot=0 IEEE80211H=0 TxRate=0 RTSThreshold=2347 FragThreshold=2346 PSMode=CAM TxPreamble=0

:~$ cd /etc/Wireless/RT61STA/
:~$ sudo apt-get install tofrodos
:~$ dos2unix rt61sta.dat
:~$sudo chmod +x /etc/Wireless/RT61STA/rt61sta.dat

[UbuntuJohan]

Hi,

I have now tried this two times with my D-link DWL-G510 REV.C card.
But I still can't get it to work.
The card is recognised but as soon as I try to configure it I get a crash e.g.

$ iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

sit0      no wireless extensions.

ra0       RT61 Wireless  ESSID:""
          Mode:Auto  Channel:0
          RTS thr=0 B   Fragment thr=0 B
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:113
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

$ sudo dhclient ra0
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.2
Copyright 2004 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/products/DHCP

sit0: unknown hardware address type 776
/etc/dhcp3/dhclient-script: line 139:  7913 Killed                  ifconfig $interface 0 up

Any ideas??

Has anyone managed to use these rt61 drivers on a 64 bit system?

Cheers
//Johan

[Henry Rayker]

try as I may, I can't even get my card to be recognized, let alone try to configure it...