Starting wlan network with RT3090 card

[ltlennon]

Hi,

I have a Pavilion DV6, with a RT3090 wireless card and just installed Back Track 4 R2, but can't get my wireless card to work. I have a dual boot, and the card works fine on Windows (just to exclude hardware malfunction possibility).

Result from lshw is:

           *-network DISABLED
                description: Wireless interface
                product: RT3090 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe
                vendor: RaLink
                physical id: 0
                bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
                logical name: wlan0
                version: 00
                width: 32 bits
                clock: 33MHz
                capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
                configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rt2860 latency=0 module=rt2860sta wireless=Ralink STA

"lspci | grep RT" results the following:

02:00.0 Network controller: RaLink RT3090 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03)

Okay, so first of all I tried the basic steps on the how to here. After that, when typing ifconfig I see eth0 and lo, but don't see wlan0. During the execution of the /etc/init.d/networks start, I see the following:

(... eth0 part removed ...)

SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
eth1: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
eth1: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
Bind socket to interface: No such device
Failed to bring up eth1.
eth2: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.1.1
Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
eth2: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
eth2: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
Bind socket to interface: No such device
Failed to bring up eth2.
ath0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.1.1
Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

SIOCSIFADDR: No such device
ath0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
ath0: ERROR while getting interface flags: No such device
Bind socket to interface: No such device
Failed to bring up ath0.
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not permitted
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.1.1
Copyright 2004-2008 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not permitted
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not permitted
Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:00:00:00:00:00
Sending on   LPF/wlan0/00:00:00:00:00:00
Sending on   Socket/fallback
receive_packet failed on wlan0: Network is down
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3
send_packet: Network is down
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
send_packet: Network is down
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 10
send_packet: Network is down
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 12
send_packet: Network is down
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 8
send_packet: Network is down
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 13
send_packet: Network is down
DHCPDISCOVER on wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 7
send_packet: Network is down
No DHCPOFFERS received.
No working leases in persistent database - sleeping.
if-up.d/mountnfs[wlan0]: waiting for interface eth1 before doing NFS mounts
if-up.d/mountnfs[wlan0]: waiting for interface eth2 before doing NFS mounts
if-up.d/mountnfs[wlan0]: waiting for interface ath0 before doing NFS mounts
done.

I am right besides my wireless router B/G/N, which is broadcasting its SSID and works on my Windows notebook besides me, so it shouldn't be wireless signal strenght problem. It is a WPA2 protected network (if that is relevant). So I connected the cable, and repeated the how to process, and eth0 is working okay. That is how I am posting here.

Then I tried WiCD, as explained here.

"/etc/init.d/wicd start" runs without any kind of error message, but when I open the wicd network manager, it says it didn't find any wireless networks, and only show my cable connection [when present].

So... Sorry if the post is kind of long, but I saw a similar post here and people were a bit annoyed that there wasn't much specifics about the problem, so I tried to put as much info as possible.

I am considering that maybe my card isn't supported out of the box? I checked on the wiki here, and doesn't say anything specific for RT3090, although RT3070 says to be tested and working. Maybe that is close enough and I should install some kind of driver?

Can anyone give me any help on what would be my next step on finding what the problem is and/or how to solve it?

Thanks!

[wh1t3fang]

you could try connecting to your wi fi network manually and see if it works
just try typing each of these commands into your terminal.
ifconfig wlan0 down
iwconfig wlan0 essid mynetworkname
iwconfig wlan0 key mynetworkkey
ifconfig wlan0 up
dhclient wlan0

[ltlennon]

Hi Dex!

Thanks for the reply. I tried what you recommended, but didn't work. I finally found out the problem and how to solve it, but it took a lot of work, so I will explain here what I did in case anyone has the same problem.

First, I downloaded the manufacturer driver here. Unzipped it, went to its folder and followed the README_STA_pci.

Problem is, with the current version there, the "load driver" step on the README wont work because of some conflict with an existing rt2860sta mod. So, "modprobe -r rt2860sta" first to remove it. Then go to the os/linux folder inside the uzipped manufacturer driver and type "insmod rt3090sta.ko".

Okay, now it is kinda working. I say kinda, because it didn't work with wicd at all, so I had to manually set it up with iwconfig and, since I have a WPA2 protected network, with wpa_supplicant as well. This tutorial here explains quite well how to do it. Another tricky thing here is that it isn't wlan0 as I expected, but the interface is actually ra0.

Well, thats it. After around 18 hours of work on this, I was finally able to make my wireless card to work. Now I will see if there is a smart way make all this automatic or just create a script to start my wireless card.

I hope the previous explanation helps anyone with the same problem, but if it is too vague, feel free to tell me and I will try to make it more specific.

Thanks guys!

[KMDave]

Good that it worked out for you and thanks for sharing the solution.