Modules for USB wireless adapter missing?

Question

I have an USB wireless adapter that is recognized as:

# lsusb
ID 148f:5370 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT5370 Wireless Adapter.

I am using this adapter on a device that has a much slimmed down kernel running Debian Jessie.

I have installed the various applications needed: wireless-tools, wpa-supplicant, ralink-firmware package, hostapd and bridge-utils.

I have rebuilt the kernel to include various modules and built the driver that accompanied the adapter.

# iwconfig

recognizes my adapter as ra0

# iwlist ra0 scan

returns the networks that should be available

# iw list

returns nothing.

# iw ra0 info
command failed: No such device (-19)

Hosting a AP fails:

# /usr/sbin/hostapd -dd /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
random: Trying to read entropy from /dev/random
Configuration file: /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
Could not open file /sys/class/net/ra0/phy80211/name: No such file or directory
netlink: Operstate: linkmode=0, operstate=6
nl80211: Set mode ifindex 6 iftype 2 (STATION)
nl80211: Failed to set interface 6 to mode 2: -19 (No such device)
nl80211: Try mode change after setting interface down
nl80211: Set mode ifindex 6 iftype 2 (STATION)
nl80211: Failed to set interface 6 to mode 2: -19 (No such device)
nl80211: Interface mode change to 2 from 0 failed
nl80211 driver initialization failed.

Connecting to a AP fails also:

# wpa_supplicant -Dnl80211 -ira0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
nl80211: Could not configure driver to use managed mode
ra0: Failed to initialize driver interface

I also tried the adapter on a laptop running debian wheezy. There everything was fine.

Am I missing some modules?

# lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
rt5370sta             742575  1
cfg80211              210493  0
rfkill                 14017  1 cfg80211
hostap                103696  0
lib80211                5372  1 hostap
xt_nat                  1750  3
xt_tcpudp               3046  6
ipt_MASQUERADE          2286  2
iptable_nat             2881  1
nf_nat_ipv4             3399  1 iptable_nat
nf_nat                 17347  4 xt_nat,ipt_MASQUERADE,iptable_nat,nf_nat_ipv4
nf_conntrack_ipv4      13503  6
nf_defrag_ipv4          1285  1 nf_conntrack_ipv4
xt_state                1108  5
nf_conntrack           77834  6 ipt_MASQUERADE,iptable_nat,nf_nat_ipv4,nf_nat,nf_conntrack_ipv4,xt_state
iptable_filter          1347  1
ip_tables              11196  2 iptable_nat,iptable_filter
x_tables               17193  6 xt_nat,xt_tcpudp,ipt_MASQUERADE,xt_state,iptable_filter,ip_tables
ppp_deflate             3787  0
bsd_comp                5006  0
evdev                   9979  0
tsc2007                 5157  0
option                 21380  1
usb_wwan               11156  1 option
usb_storage            45150  0
scsi_mod              120215  1 usb_storage
ppp_async               7246  1
ppp_generic            26588  7 ppp_deflate,bsd_comp,ppp_async
slhc                    5513  1 ppp_generic
crc_ccitt               1517  1 ppp_async
phy_mxs_usb             2952  2
ci_hdrc_imx             3956  0
ci_hdrc                 7027  1 ci_hdrc_imx
ehci_hcd               58577  1 ci_hdrc
usbserial              35306  5 option,usb_wwan

Solution

@casey Thank you, I tried the experimental support. The adapter is now recognized as wlan0 and iw list seems to work.

Connecting to a AP seems also to work.

Hosting my own AP looked to work at first but when I try to connect to the AP from my phone, there goes a long time after inserting the password and there seems to be some kind of timeout and it does not connect:

...
lib80211: common routines for IEEE802.11 drivers
lib80211_crypt: registered algorithm 'NULL'
...
triton1 login: ieee80211 phy0: rt2800usb_entry_txstatus_timeout: Warning - TX status timeout for entry 8 in queue 2
ieee80211 phy0: rt2800usb_entry_txstatus_timeout: Warning - TX status timeout for entry 8 in queue 2
ieee80211 phy0: rt2800usb_entry_txstatus_timeout: Warning - TX status timeout for entry 8 in queue 2
....

EDIT:

I got hosting my own AP to work.

I loaded some extra modules:

modprobe lib80211_crypt-tkip
modprobe lib80211_crypt-wep
modprobe lib80211_crypt-ccmp

Then gave wlan0 an static IP.

And hosted a DHCP server (udhcpd) that was attached to wlan0.

Comments

[casey]

Have you tried the experimental support in the kernel driver shown in your last screenshot? RT2800USB_RT53XX?

[Ugh.]

No, the source code for the driver was on a CD that followed the adapter and I did not like the sound of EXPERIMENTAL.

[casey]

Its worth a shot to try; don't be alarmed by the experimental tag. Also when using your vendor provided driver, make sure it works with the kernel version you are using and check if there are any updates. Lastly, to check the differences between boxes, compare the contents of /proc/config.gz.

[Thorsten Staerk]

you will need to install the firmware that fits the driver, I describe the setup of Ralink with SUSE Linux here: linuxintro.org/wiki/WLAN. How do you find out in Debian if driver and firmware fit to each other?

[Ugh.]

I installed this package of the firmware: packages.debian.org/jessie/firmware-ralink