Install linux drivers for ralink rt2870

**simon82** · November 1st, 2009

Originally Posted by WiseGuy1020

Here is what I did to get the rt2870 (Dlink DWA-160) working in Karmic at 270mb/s. This worked on a Dell Inspiron 1520, a HP Pavillion dv9000, and an Acer Revo 3600.

1. First a clean install of ubuntu 9.10 final. DO NOT CONNECT YOUR rt2870 USB wireless while you install or after.

2. After install "sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf" Then add "blacklist rt2800usb" to the bottom. Save it.

3. Reboot. Plug in your rt2870 usb and connect to your access point. I was using WPA2 on a mixed g/n network and it connected fine. But it will only connect at 54 mb/s.

4. Install "build-essentials" make sure you "sudo apt-get update" first.

5. Download the rt2870 driver from Ralink's website. Sometimes the site is down. Be patient and try again later.

6. Extract the bz2 file. Open the resulting folder. Open the folder labeled "os", then the one labeled "linux."

7.Open the "config.mk" file with gedit.
Change

Code:

# Support Wpa_Supplicant
HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT=n

# Support Native WpaSupplicant for Network Maganger
HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=n

to

Code:

# Support Wpa_Supplicant
HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT=y

# Support Native WpaSupplicant for Network Maganger
HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=y

8.Save it.

9. In a terminal cd into the original extracted folder "cd /home/yourname/2009_0820_RT2870_Linux_STA_V2.2.0.0" or where ever you extracted it.

10. Run "sudo make" You will get some errors and it will end in an error. Don't worry about it.

11. Run "sudo make install" This will also give you some errors and it will exit real quick. Don't worry.

12. Reboot. Believe it or not everything should work. Thats what worked for me. No other steps in between.

Code:

dman@dman-desktop:~$ iwconfig ra0
ra0       RT2870 Wireless  ESSID:"JDubs"  Nickname:"RT2870STA"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency=2.412 GHz  Access Point:   
00:24:01:XX:XX:XX   
          Bit Rate=270 Mb/s   
          RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Link Quality=100/100  Signal level:-47 dBm  Noise level:-71 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

Hope it helps someone.

Works like a charm on my 2 D-LINK DWA-140 cards aswell. Thx alot!

**ff8jake** · November 1st, 2009

Hmm, using the above steps did increase my connection speed from 54mbps to 130mbps (max supported by DWA-140 to my knowledge) - but I am still having horrendous lag times on initial connections. For instance:

Code:

ff8jake@machine:~$ telnet ubuntuforums.org 80


*** INSERT 10 SECOND LAG HERE ***


Trying 91.189.94.12...
Connected to ubuntuforums.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
^]

telnet> quit
Connection closed.
ff8jake@machine:~$

Anyone have any ideas if this is related to this driver issue or not? Anyone know any steps I could take to diagnose what is happening? Once the connection is established or has been recently established (i.e. coming here. I go to ubuntuforums.org, lag for 10 seconds or so) I can jump page to page no problems.

EDIT: Would like to add, this does not appear to affect local connections. Doing a telnet test to localhost:22 works just fine, so this appears to only affect things travelling out the wireless adapter.

**ff8jake** · November 1st, 2009

Finally have all of this working correctly. Using WiseGuy1020's steps above, I am now connected at 130mbps. The lag issue I was experiencing was NOT caused by this driver issue, but apparently due to Ubuntu using my router as a DNS provider as well as automatically picking up Comcast as a search provider. After removing these and specifying OpenDNS in my resolv.conf, everything began working correctly immediately.

Cheers

**gigurra** · November 1st, 2009

I'm trying to install a Belkin N150 usb adapter with rt2870 chipset,
but when trying to compile the latest drivers I initially had to get a kernel-31
patch for the drivers for them to compile.

Then i compiled and installed them, modprobe worked fine BUT no wireless networks
are detected. I can see the device is on, it detects networks in win7, but in ubuntu 9.10
nope, no networks. if I do iwconfig or ifconfig the device is there, but....

Im a n00b that is lost. Spent many hours on this now but starting to feel it's hopeless.
This is my second wireless adapter i try to get working in ubuntu =/

**WiseGuy1020** · November 2nd, 2009

Jake & Simon: I am really stoked that I could help you guys out.

gigurra: My only advice is that I think you plugged in your USB wireless BEFORE you blacklisted rt2800usb. Are you sure you blacklisted rt2800usb in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf? I could not compile and install completely when I tried but it still worked. Whenever I had problems I noticed that I had plugged in my Dlink before I blacklisted the other driver.

**nick77** · November 2nd, 2009

I just reinstalled Ubuntu 9.10, blacklisted without my Buffalo WLI-UC-300N plugged in following above tutorial very strictly - to no avail.

My usb stick gets recognized by the built-in usb driver, it even displays the available networks - however, it wouldn't be able to connect.

As the sta module is v1.4, it doesn't include my wifi card's usb keynumber (Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0411:00e8 MelCo., Inc.)

Apparently, WiseGuy's howto helps people with already working cards stuck at 54 Mbit to improve the speed but not non-working cards...

Did anybody find a fix how to be able to compile the driver from the website with the latest kernel 2.6.31-14-generic?

Thanks for your help!

Nick