[beagleboard] Cannot use RT2870 Ralink Wifi USB stick on Ubuntu in Beagle Board

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1

Hello,

Dear all,

I have managed to get Ubuntu running on my BB by using the demo image
as explained here:

BeagleBoardUbuntu - eLinux.org

with the Karmic distro option.

My RT2870 wifi stick is detected automatically in Ubuntu Karmic on my
PC, but is not detected on my BB.

I noted that in /lib/modules section, my PC has much more files and
folders present than /lib/modules on Beagle Board. In fact, my PC has
a file /lib/modules/2.6.31-14-generic/kernel/drivers/staging/rt2870/
rt2870sta.ko, while BB does not, if this helps.

Could someone help me out so I can get the Wifi stick to work on BB?

Thanks and regards,

Gianluca Valentino

What Kernel? (uname -a)

The RT2xxx devices usually have two drivers in the kernel. In staging
the Ralink gpl driver and the rt2x00 project...

http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

Some users have had better luck with this hardware by using the
network-manager gui vs iwconfig...

Regards,

2

Hello,

I am using the 2.6.32.7-x7.1 kernel.

So there is no need to build the module from the source on Ralink's
website? I found guides to do this on Internet (for a PC), however
make (on the board) would fail since it cannot find the /lib/modules/
2.6.32.7-x7.1/build folder where linux headers should be located. I
tried doing sudo make to make the module on my PC, however after
transferring the .ko and .dat files to the board and doing insmod, I
got "invalid module format". I think this is the case because you
cannot insert modules which were compiled with kernel sources of one
particular kernel into another kernel version.

I don't remember if 2.6.32.7-x7.1 had those modules external or internal...

But with 2.6.32.9-x9.1 they are here:

ls -lh /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rt2x00
total 180K
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 28K 2010-02-25 10:17 rt2500usb.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 50K 2010-02-25 10:17 rt2800usb.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 38K 2010-02-25 10:17 rt2x00lib.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 17K 2010-02-25 10:17 rt2x00usb.ko
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 36K 2010-02-25 10:17 rt73usb.ko

When I do a search for .ko modules related to rt2870, I find nothing
on the board. However I did find a file rt2870.bin in /lib/firmware.

Regards,

3

Look again, it's there... "--kernel image" extracts a *.deb file
directly to /lib/modules/

Regards,