Need help with WLAN on Eee PC 1000H

[Albert Graham]

Hi Adalbert,

I have two of these EeePC 1000h, and WPA2 is not supported by the 
default Linux OS installed,

I installed Fedora 10 via PXE boot (using a network cable) slooowwww.. 
but it worked out of the box.

I installed KDE only - which looks great cos the black theme matches the 
black version of this machine so well - oops getting off track.

I then downloaded and compiled the 
2008_0918_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.8.0.0.tar.bz2 as per this thread:

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=199434 (details you need 
at listed below).

However, I'm using the newer version 1.8 (and there may be a newer one 
since, have not checked), I cannot remeber if it patched 
(sta_ioctl.patch) cleanly or not or even if you need the patch in the 
newer version, anyhow, reboot and it should work when you login.

TIP: If you have a USB Stick (mine was 1GB) unzip and compile the 
drivers directly on that or better still, compile it on an NFS mount cos 
the SDD disk is really slow :( (this does not effect the everyday 
performance).

Also, don't mess with wpa_supplicant and what not (i.e chkconfig etc) , 
just let NetworkManager do it's stuff.

WPA2 works perfectly using this (and the network is very reliable).

I also installed a PAM module that automatically logged on to the 
wireless when I log in (cos having to type in the Key Manager password 
every time I login was just plain annoying).

(What would be nice is if it would connect via Wireless when in init 3 
(like the cable) and use that connection for each user - and I think 
that's on the cards for NetworkManager in the future).

INSTRUCTIONS FROM LINK ABOVE:

1. To be able to compile the driver we need a few extra packages. In the 
terminal (as root), type
Code:

yum install gcc kernel-devel kernel-headers

2. Obtain the latest Ralink driver here (1.7.0.0 at the time of writing 
this post)
3. Unzip the driver to a directory.
4. Open the directory, and go to 
2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0/os/linux/rt_main_dev.c
5. Look up "dev->nd_net" and replace it with "dev_net(dev)", then save 
the file and close it (thanx
toCiaran McCreesh’s Blag for this tip).
6. Open 2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0/os/linux/config.mk and 
change "HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT" and
"HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT" to "y".
7. Download hdp's patch, and copy it to 
2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0/os/linux
8. Open a terminal, cd to 2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0/os/linux 
and type "patch sta_ioctl.c
sta_ioctl.patch"
9. From the terminal cd to 2008_0708_RT2860_Linux_STA_v1.7.0.0 and type 
"make", it should finish without
any errors.
10. Type "make install", then when finished, exit the terminal.
11. If you restart the Eee PC and enable the wireless from the BIOS, it 
should be recognized without
problems.


Best of luck.

Albert.




Adalbert Prokop wrote:
> Hello!
>
> Last week I wrote to the fedora-laptop list, bo nobody there was able to 
> help me. I need your help with my WLAN on a Asus Eee PC 1000H. It has a 
> Ralink WiFi card
>
> --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< ---
> 01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: RaLink Device [1814:0781]
>         Subsystem: RaLink Device [1814:2790]
>         Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 19
>         Memory at fbef0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
>         Capabilities: <access denied>
>         Kernel driver in use: rt2860
>         Kernel modules: rt2860sta
> --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< ---
>
> I configured the rpmfusion repository and installed the rt2860
> package. There was a small caveat - I had to do "iwpriv ra0 radio_on" in
> order to do anything related with WLAN, but afterward scanning was
> possible. But I can't connect my AP using Network Manager. Basically I
> see those two lines in wpa_supplicant.log
>
> Trying to associate with 00:18:f3:85:6a:31 (SSID='memphis' freq=2437 MHz)
> Authentication with 00:00:00:00:00:00 timed out.
>
> NM keeps asking me for a password, but my input is definitely correct.
>
> So I thought NM messes things up (as was my experience with my old
> notebook) and I tried to get WLAN running using iwconfig +
> wpa_supplicant configuration directly. Here is my wpa_supplicant.conf I
> used.
>
> --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< ---
> ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
> ctrl_interface_group=wheel
>
> network={
>         ssid="memphis"
>         scan_ssid=1
>         psk="myverysecretpassword"
> }
> --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< --- 8< ---
>
> But it did not work either, the Eee PC still could not connect to the AP.
>
> The only way I can establish a WLAN connection is to compile the rt2860
> driver from the Ralink homepage
> (http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Linux.html) without any
> patches and configure it *only* for wpa_supplicant support, not NM
> support! Then and only then I can connect to my AP using WPA *but* I
> have to use iwpriv command to set the encryption password! (iwpriv set
> WPA=secret)
>
> Did you succeed in using WLAN with F10 on Eee PC 1000H and if yes - how 
> did you do it? Do you have an idea how to convince Ralink's chip to 
> behave "normally"?
> I've ran out of ideas what else to try. Do you see a point I'm obviously
> missing? I've search the net, but it seems to work for everybody else,
> contradicting my experience.
>
> Any help is *very* appreciated.
>
>