Wireless driver - how to load manufacturer's STA file (Ralink 3290)

Question

Caution: I'm a newb.

Hardware: Giada i35G, cedar trail atom with Nvidia gf119, railtek ethernet and Ralink 3290 for wireless.

Already accomplished: Installed Ubuntu 12.10, loaded GPU drivers and redirected sound out through GPU card to HDMI. Ethernet works like a charm.

Issue: Can't get my wireless up and running. There seems to be no package to which I can simply run a sudo apt-get install.

I found the corresponding Linux driver from the manufacturer's site, but I have not managed to find out what to with the file. Here's the manufacturers site. I get a file with the following name: \2012_0508_RT3290_Linux_STA_v2.6.0.0.bz2

I hope somebody might be able to tell me what to do next.

Thanks for reading and apologies for potentially asking a trivial question.

Best regards, Matt

Solution

First, right-click the file and select Rename. Rename it to 2012_0508_RT3290_Linux_STA_v2.6.0.0.tar.bz2; that is, without the leading slash and adding .tar. Now right-click it and select Extract Here. Open the file os/linux/config.mk with any text editor and change the line:

HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=n

...to

HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=y

Proofread, save and close the text editor. Now, with a temporary ethernet connection, do:

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-generic
cd Desktop/DPO_RT3290_LinuxSTA_V2600_20120508

...or wherever you extracted the package, if not your desktop.

sudo su
make
make install
modprobe rt3290sta
exit

Please post any errors, questions, etc. Warnings are alright. Your question and this process are in no way trivial.

Comments

[Matt]

Wow - I followed your directions point by point and it works: My issue has hereby been resolved. Thank you very much!

[chili555]

The driver you compiled is for your currently running kernel version only. When a newer kernel, also known as linux-image, is installed by Update Manager, recompile: sudo su; make clean; make install; modprobe rt3290sta; exit. If you feel my answer was effective, please click 'Accept.'

[Matt]

Thanks for the addition: I just had to go through these steps as an update to the kernel got me back where I started. Thanks again. Is there a way to write a script that does this? (in DOS I would probably write a .bat file or similar, if that makes sense)

[Matt]

Found out how to write and exe a script: askubuntu.com/questions/61600/… :-)

[Dmitriy]

Thanks, chili! But i had problems with this guide in 12.10, and that's why installed 12.04 and now Wi-Fi works!

[Matt]

With new autoupdates to 12.10 I can't get it working again anymore using the procedures above. Any thoughts or ideas?

[chili555]

Were there any errors or warnings at 'make' or 'make install'? Please run the procedure again and post them if any.

[Matt]

The make procedure goes well (clean, install). When calling modprobe rt3290sta the following error is displayed:"FATAL: Error inserting rt3290sta (/lib/modules/3.5.0-22-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/r‌​t3290sta.ko): Invalid argument"

[chili555]

I made an error above. It should be: sudo su; make clean; make; make install; modprobe rt3290sta; exit. I apologize for my misstep.

[OYRM]

I've run into a new problem with 13.04, rarring ringtail. Make exits with a set of errors at various lines in : italic_DPO_RT3290_LinuxSTA_V2600_20120508/os/linux/../../os/‌​linux/pci_main_dev.c‌​_italic of the type italic...:error: expected ‘=’, ‘,’, ‘;’, ‘asm’ or ‘attribute’ before ‘rt2860_remove_one’italic all of which are related to the preprocessor macros "__devinit", "__devexit", and "__devinitdata", which are used in the source code but appear to not exist in linux headers any longer. Any thoughts on this ?

[chili555]

I believe your device is covered by rt2800pci in Ubuntu 13.04. Is it not working for you? What are your symptoms?