Making USB Wireless Device Work on Linux

We bought a new USB wireless device today, April 13, 2007. The brand is PCI MINI2, product code GW-US54Mini2W. It is an IEEE 802.11b/g card, and costs about US$25 in Thailand. We specifically bought this card because it works with Linux.

The web page for the product is here:

http://www.planex.net/product/wireless/gw-us54mini2w.htm

Instructions to compile driver modules

Copy the driver module folder to your home directory.

Copy Makefile.6 to Makefile (if your kernel is 2.6.17, otherwise use Makefile.4)

cp Makefile.6 Makefile

Run the Configure script.

./Configure

The Configure script will ask where your kernel is. I pointed to my kernel source directory: /usr/src/kernels/2.6.17-1.2142_FC4-i686. Note: If you don't have kernel sources, you will need to install kernel-devel. How you do this varies - on my Fedora system, I just ran "yum -y install kernel-devel."

Next, compile the module.

make
make all

Copy file rt73.bin to the /etc/Wireless/RT73STA/ directory.

cp rt73.bin /etc/Wireless/RT73STA/

Convert rt73sta.dat to Unix format by running the dos2unix command.

dos2unix rt73sta.dat

Copy rt73sta.dat to the /etc/Wireless/RT73STA/ directory.

cp rt73sta.dat /etc/Wireless/RT73STA/

Inserting the module into the kernel and starting the network interface

Before the wifi device can be located, the module you just compiled has to be attached to the kernel. This can be handled at boot time (in /etc/rc.local),

#add to /etc/rc.local, using whatever the proper path is.
/sbin/insmod your-path-to/rt73.ko

Or, you can use a script like this to insert the module, start the network interface, scan for available wireless LAN, configure your card for one of the available LANs, and start the dhclient to get the IP address.

#!/bin/sh
# Must be run as root

  #remove the next line if you have already put it in /etc/rc.local
/sbin/insmod your-path-to/rt73.ko
  #turn the device on
/sbin/ifconfig rausb0 up
  #If you are in a new place, check available wireless ESSID with /sbin/iwlist scan
/sbin/iwlist scan 
 #The output will have a list of ESSIDs. Mine is "linksys". 
 #Change the line below to match your ESSID
/sbin/iwconfig rausb0 essid linksys
 #Finally, start the dhclient on that device
/sbin/dhclient -x rausb0

The following script will kill a running dhclient. You must kill a running client if you change locations, and want to change the ESSID as above.

#!/bin/sh
# Must be run as root
/sbin/ifconfig rausb0 down
killall -9 dhclient

Interest in Burma?

When I looked at the visitor logs for my site, I found a visitor from NBC Universal in North Hollywood, searching for images of "Burma Village" through google images. Burma is interesting indeed. I hope more Burmese people realize that there is much to be done for Burma both in terms of academia and economy.

Thailand banned www.youtube.com after finding out that a 44-second film showing graffiti over the king's face was aired.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/6528303.stm

First, Burma and now Thailand? :)