[SLL] USB WiFi and Linux (rt2870)

[Jarod Wilson]

On Dec 27, 2008, at 10:14 AM, "Brian C. Lane" <bcl at brianlane.com> wrote:
> Jarod Wilson wrote:
>> On Fri, 2008-12-26 at 15:28 -0800, Brian Lane wrote:
>
> [snip]
>
>>> Has anyone successfully used a rt2870 based USB WiFi? Do you have  
>>> any
>>> suggestions as to what to try? I'm pretty well out of ideas.  
>>> Everything
>>> I see on the net says 'It works'. Everything I try says 'its a POS'.
>>
>> Odd. The exact same Edimax stick in my possession connects to both my
>> D-Link DIR-655 802.11n AP w/WPA2 protection here at home, and the
>> (Cisco, I think) 802.11G AP('s) w/WEP at the office just fine, gets  
>> an
>> IP via DHCP, etc. We should be using pretty similar kernels too,  
>> F10 and
>> F9's latest available update kernels are reasonably well in sync  
>> right
>> now. I think I've only tried mine on an i686 box, not sure if that's
>> relevant or not. Throughput over 802.11n is excellent, actually  
>> tends to
>> be consistently better than either the iwl4965 in my ThinkPad T61  
>> or the
>> iwl5350 in my Acer Aspire One.
>>
>
> I'm using the i686 kernel, -9 release updated just yesterday. When you
> set it up did you use NetworkManager or the /etc/Wireless/RA... config
> file? The system I need it to work on doesn't have Gnome installed so
> I'm using command line for it, but I also tried it on my other F9  
> system
> with Gnome and it didn't show in any of the GUI networking utilities
> that I could find.

Ah yes, shoulf have considered that part of the equation... I've only  
used NetworkManager to bring up the connection. Of course, if NM can  
be made to work, its gotta work via good old cli somehow or another...  
My non-NM wifi experiences, esp. w/wpa, are quite limited... Poked at  
getting a broadcom card working outside of NM but quickly gave up, as  
it was just easier to use NM in this case... :/

--jarod