rt61pci driver fails with Airlink101 AWLH5026

[Patrick J. LoPresti]

My wireless adapter is an Airlink101 AWLH5026. lspci identifies it as vendor ID 1814, device ID 0401 ("Ralink RT2600 802.11 MIMO").

Current release of Edgy correctly loads the rt61pci module. Network Settings shows both wmaster0 and wlan0 devices, and it lets me configure and activate wlan0. I am not using any encryption.

But the wireless does not work. DHCP does not acquire a lease, and I am unable to ping the router even if I use a static IP address.

"iwconfig wlan0" shows "Not-Associated".

HOWEVER: When I run "iwlist scan", I can see my access point. If I use "iwconfig wlan0 ap xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx" to set the access point manually, the wireless starts working; I can ping my access point and access the Internet. I am using it now to submit this bug. :-)

But the setup is fragile. If I attempt to switch to DHCP in Network Settings, the association breaks (goes back to "Not-Associated") and I have trouble re-associating even manually.

I am willing to debug this further if an expert will tell me how to proceed. I was hoping this card would "just work" in Edgy... I had to follow the embarrassingly hairy instructions at http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=132980 to get it working in Dapper. Ubuntu should be better than this, and I would like to help.

Thank you!

[Patrick J. LoPresti (lopresti)]

Addendum:

Apparently, I have rediscovered the procedure documented in the README for the rt61pci driver.

http://rt2400.cvs.sourceforge.net/rt2400/source/rt2x00/README?revision=1.39

"- After the client interface has been brought up, scanning can be performed to check if the desired AP is being detected. Note that it is currently mandatory to scan at least once before starting an association attempt.

 # $ iwlist wlan0 scan

 - To start an association attempt, the AP address should be set:

 # $ iwconfig wlan0 ap mybssid"

Does this behavior (mandatory scan after ifconfig bring-up) mean that this hardware can never work out-of-the-box with Ubuntu?

[Patrick J. LoPresti (lopresti)]

Another addendum for others trying to get this card working in Edgy:

With just a little manual configuration, this card is functioning fine with the current drivers in Edgy.

First I configured it in network-admin.

Then I edited /etc/network/interfaces to add these lines to the "iface wlan0 ..." stanza:

  post-up iwlist scan
  post-up iwconfig wlan0 ap XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX

(where XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX is the address of my access point)

That's all. In total, my wlan0 stanza in /etc/network/interfaces looks like this:

iface wlan0 inet static
wireless-essid <my SSID>
address 192.168.1.37 # my IP address
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
post-up iwlist scan
post-up iwconfig wlan0 ap <my access point address>

...with only the "post-up" lines having been added by hand. I suspect a DHCP configuration could be made to work similarly.

So this is not as bad as I thought at first. Still, it would be better if this hardware could work automagically...

[Patrick J. LoPresti (lopresti)]

Well, after a few hours, the wireless card locked up. I was unable even to "ping" my router. Rebooting did not help; I had to power-cycle to get my network back.

This driver is obviously not ready for prime time. I gave up and bought a D-Link WDA-1320 (Atheros chipset), which seems to be working much better.

[Javier Jardón (jjardon)]

Do you have problems in Feisty final?

[Javier Jardón (jjardon)]

We are closing this bug report as it lacks the information, described in
the previous comments, we need to investigate the problem further.
However, please reopen it if you can give us the missing information and
feel free to submit bug reports in the future.