Poor wireless reception on Pardus 2009.2

[windy_miller]

I there. I am a new to Pardus. I thought I would give Pardus a try after using Linux Mint for a number of years and I'm loving it except for one major issue with my Wireless connectivity.

I have a laptop PC with built in Ralink RT73 wireless. I find that unless I am very close to my wireless router the reception is very poor and I either cannot connect to the network or the connection drops and it is difficult for me to reconnect.

I had exactly the same issue with Linux Mint and after investigation I resolved it by installing a backports package called "linux-backports-modules-wireless-karmic-generic". From what I can see the source for the Ralink cards is here https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/i386?text=ralink but I really wouldn't know what to do with it if I downloaded it or if it would even work.

Is there anything similar in Pardus? I can't see anything is any of the repos I have found so far.

My whole post on the topic is in the forums here: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=37279

I have tried for a number of hours to install a Windows driver under ndiswrapper but hit one problem after another. I have also tried compiling the driver directly from the Ralink website but the ./Configure fails and I cant get any further.

This is a real show stopper for me as I can't operate without a consistent wireless connection.


All help appreciated.

Kind regards

[windy_miller]

Have done some further work on this. I have installed Pisibul and see that in Pisifinder there are two packages marked ralink-firmware. One in "Devel" and one in "Playground". I am unable to install them though ..

if I select "goto address" it tries to take the browser to http://svn.pardus.org.tr/pardus/devel/kernel/firmware/ralink-firmware which returns and error 404 and the message.

Not Found

The requested URL /pardus/devel/kernel/firmware/ralink-firmware was not found on this server.

[krycek]

Exactly the same problem here.

I have tried a bunch of things to make it work without success and have given up on pardus for that reason.

I would be interested to see a solution for that so I could try pardus again.

I love the distribution and I would like to stick with it. But without internet connection I can't do that.

[windy_miller]

OK finally got ndiswrapper installed by downloading clean packge of ndiswrapper from sourceforge, untarring and doing following.

make distclean clean
make
sudo make install

This seems to put everything back as it should be. I went through the install process again and it all seemed to work OK.

Told wicd to use ndiswrapper but it wont connect to the router. Keeps saying that the password is incorrect.

Changed wicd back to use wext and it works as before.

Ideas anybody on getting wicd to use ndiswrapper successfully? Do I need to blacklist the original linux driver, if so does anybody know what it's called?

Thanks all.

[atolboo]

OK finally got ndiswrapper installed by downloading clean packge of ndiswrapper from sourceforge, untarring and doing following.

Installing ndiswrapper in Pardus isn't necessary as this is installed by default as you can see in the next ouput:

LC_ALL=C pisi info module-ndiswrapper
Installed package:
Name                : module-ndiswrapper, version: 1.54_20090616, release: 47, build 20
Summary             : A network driver wrapper
Description         : module-ndiswrapper allows you to use Windows XP drivers for WLAN cards without proper Linux drivers.
Component           : kernel.default.drivers
Provides            :
Dependencies        : kernel module-ndiswrapper-userspace
Distribution        : Pardus, Dist. Release: 2009
Architecture        : i686, Installed Size: 194.00 KB

And here is the Wiki page for ndiswrapper

[windy_miller]

Thanks atolboo

you are right ndiswrapper was installed and I did follow the instructions you kindly linked to however the installed version errord at the point of doing modprobe.

The action I detailed was the fix for the error. (I cant remember what the error was now and I am not with my PC currently so I cant check. It was something to do with the .ko file)

I still haven't figured out how to get wicd (or network manager) to use the ndiswrapper version of the driver instead of the native Linux version. Any ideas?

[atolboo]

The action I detailed was the fix for the error. (I cant remember what the error was now and I am not with my PC currently so I cant check. It was something to do with the .ko file)

As long as you get an error and thus the driver hasn't been installed properly, it doesn't make any sense try to find the wireless device in Network Manager or any other manager.
In the mean time I will try to get hold of a Ralink RT73 wireless device in order to test this for myself.

[windy_miller]

No you misunderstand. I have fixed the ndiswrapper error. What I need to know now is how to use Ndiswrapper instead of the native Linux driver.

However don't forget I am doing this because the Linux driver is not good and if you read my orogonal post you will see my issues and how I got around it when I used Ubuntu & Linux Mint.

I also know where the source is for the Ubuntu .debs but am not sure what to with it to make it work in Pardus.

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts the devel link in Pisibul was not working and there was a RALINK driver there. Any ideas if we can get hold of that? (assuming it is newer than the driver in Production)

[atolboo]

No you misunderstand. I have fixed the ndiswrapper error.

OK.

What I need to know now is how to use Ndiswrapper instead of the native Linux driver.

The problem is the name of the rt73 kernel driver.
Maybe you can find out the name of the rt73 kernel driver with

Code:

lsmod

After adding this name to the file  /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf by means of:
Dolphin > goto file > right-click > Root action > Open as text >
And after a restart of the computer (kernel) the ndiswrapper driver should be active and your wireless device should be visible in Network Manager.

Maybe this mini how-to will bring the solution. 

[windy_miller]

The problem is the name of the rt73 kernel driver.
Maybe you can find out the name of the rt73 kernel driver with

It's rt2500usb

After adding this name to the file  /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf by means of:
Dolphin > goto file > right-click > Root action > Open as text >
And after a restart of the computer (kernel) the ndiswrapper driver should be active and your wireless device should be visible in Network Manager.

I have done this and I seem to have a connection now using ndiswrapper   

At first look the signal appears to be more stable and perhaps a little stronger. I will monitor over the next day or so and advise further tomorrow night.

Thanks for your help so far.

[windy_miller]

 

This is really bad. After a number of successful connections and reboots I suddenly can't connect to either of my routers ......

I gave my PC one final reboot before I went to bed and suddenly it just returns that it is unable to authenticate on either router. I removed the password in the connection settings saved, keyed them back in again and saved but it made no difference.

Switched PC off overnight and tried again this morning but no change.

I will try rebooting routers again tonight and see what happens.

[atolboo]

Or maybe is this a case of degrading hardware

[windy_miller]

I think not - from my orignal post

I had exactly the same issue with Linux Mint and after investigation I resolved it by installing a backports package called "linux-backports-modules-wireless-karmic-generic". From what I can see the source for the Ralink cards is here https://launchpad.net/ubuntu/karmic/i386?text=ralink  but I really wouldn't know what to do with it if I downloaded it or if it would even work.

Is there anything similar in Pardus? I can't see anything is any of the repos I have found so far.

My whole post on the topic is in the forums here: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=37279

If rebooting my routers doesn't work I am tempted to reinstall Linux Mint. Unfortunatly these issues only started occuring when I installed Pardus 

[atolboo]

And if you want support from the real experts of Pardus I can only advice to make a bug report at Bugzilla.
Maybe they already have something in some devel repo.

[windy_miller]

Bugzilla report 13621 filed - let's hope we can get to the bottom of this.