WiFi Ralink RT5390 drivers included in Fedora, but removed from Ubuntu

[John Smith]

Dear Ubuntu Team,

I’m stuck since I cannot report a bug directly from Ubuntu. This is very critical as there’s no problem at all in Fedora 16 and upcoming 17. No Ralink WiFi drivers is the biiiiiig issue. I want Xubuntu 12.04 to have them too. Make it happen please, I beg you. It will only take you 5 min. of your life and make me happy!!!! And I cannot test Ubuntu without WiFi and file further bugs!!!!

Here’s the link for the Ralink RT 5390 (called 539x). Please include it as Fedora does it for a long time now:

link with all drivers:
http://www.ralinktech.com/en/04_support/support.php?sn=501

RT 5390/539x driver:

http://www.ralinktech.com/en/04_support/license.php?sn=5001

Thanks in advance

PS. I need to test AMD Northern Islands drivers as well….

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

The attachment "Fedora 15, 16, 17 has it included so should Ubuntu" of this bug report has been identified as being a patch. The ubuntu-reviewers team has been subscribed to the bug report so that they can review the patch. In the event that this is in fact not a patch you can resolve this situation by removing the tag 'patch' from the bug report and editing the attachment so that it is not flagged as a patch. Additionally, if you are member of the ubuntu-reviewers team please also unsubscribe the team from this bug report.

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[Brad Figg (brad-figg)]

This bug is missing log files that will aid in diagnosing the problem. From a terminal window please run:

apport-collect 944354

and then change the status of the bug to 'Confirmed'.

If, due to the nature of the issue you have encountered, you are unable to run this command, please add a comment stating that fact and change the bug status to 'Confirmed'.

This change has been made by an automated script, maintained by the Ubuntu Kernel Team.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi John,

Thank you for the bug report. I was looking at the Ubuntu 12.04 kernel, which is based on upstream v3.2. There does appear to be support for RT5390 via the rt2800pci driver:

commit 60687ba710359f32343b7630dc05d3811ef5bf4c
Author: RA-Shiang Tu <email address hidden>
Date: Sun Feb 20 13:57:46 2011 +0100

    rt2x00: Add support for RT5390 chip

    Add new RT5390 chip support

config RT2800PCI_RT53XX
       bool "rt2800pci - Include support for rt53xx devices (EXPERIMENTAL)"
       depends on EXPERIMENTAL
       default y
       ---help---
         This adds support for rt53xx wireless chipset family to the
         rt2800pci driver.
         Supported chips: RT5390

~/ubuntu-precise/debian.master/config$ grep -rn "RT2800PCI_RT53XX" *
config.common.ubuntu:4299:CONFIG_RT2800PCI_RT53XX=y

Even with this support included, it appears you are still experiencing some issues. Could you please provide the following information when running the latest 3.2.0-18.28 Precise 12.04 kernel:

 * dmesg > dmesg.log
 * sudo lspci -vnvn > lspci-vnvn.log
 * A detailed description of the exact issue you are seeing when running this latest kernel

As you may understand, having to carry an out of tree driver (ie 539x) for the life of an LTS release is not our ideal solution. If the in tree driver could be fixed instead, that would be best and everyone (not just Ubuntu) would benefit from the solution. Thanks in advance.

[Craig Magina (craig.magina)]

I am running Precise on an HP dm1z, which has the Ralink 5390 wireless chip and everything works out of the box. I used to manually build the above mentioned driver, but was able to stop doing that a while ago. I can't remember if Oneiric supported this chip, but I know for a fact that Precise does.

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Craig, thanks for the info. This is really good to hear this is working out of the box for you with Precise. Could I ask you to attach the output of 'sudo lspci -vnvn > lspci-vnvn.log" just so we can capture your hw info. Thanks!

[John Smith (m8r-ob3phl)]

Hi,

Thank you very much for response. I don't know if the issue should be closed.

Here's the short story:

I downloaded latest Xubuntu:

$ uname -a
Linux xubuntu 3.2.0-18-generic #29-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 9 21:36:08 UTC
2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux

The old driver is working now (previously wasn't at all, but
supposedly was there!!! Do they disable themselves miraculously in the
kernel? Or did someone added a line for the OLD drivers that somehow
works now with a very similar rt539xpci ?.

Anyway, its rt2800pci and its working. I am so happy now, although I
highly suspect its NOT the proper driver and for LTS, I think it
should. For this card Ralink provides Linux drivers rt590xpci 2.5.0.3
(09/26/2011). And its a separate, different download from rt2800pci.

For the install of rt539xpci people recommend blacklisting rt2800pci
(kernel included (?) rt2800pci wasn't working for me at all, now its
working- miracle).

I attach some $: all in one: demesg-lspci-vnvn-uname-a-lshw

Thank you,
John

[Leann Ogasawara (leannogasawara)]

Hi John,

I'm not sure why things wouldn't have been working for you earlier, it's hard to say. But given your feedback that the rt2800pci driver is working for you now, I'm going to close this bug. As I had mentioned previously, carrying an out of tree driver is a large maintenance burden on the team. Given that the in-tree driver is working well for you there doesn't seem to be any reason to support carrying the out of tree driver. I would also encourage you to contact the rt539xpci driver authors and request they submit the driver upstream. That way everyone can benefit by it being available in the upstream kernel. Thanks.