I took a chance on the cheapest micro wireless dongle I could find on ebay (£4.50) (3/2/13 - Just got one of these for £3.89, and can confirm it works fine - seems to be the same as the one I originally used. - The original supplier on Ebay put price up to something stupid! http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/310574944823) - It worked very well in windows, but I really wanted it for the Pi. It was relatively straightforward to setup. Obviously you need a working connection of some sort to download the required files. - I did this by bridging my wireless connection on windows7 with the (otherwise unused) wired connection and plugging the Pi.
1. - The package firmware-ralink from the Debian Squeeze install doesn't work - it doesn't contain the right firmware.
2. - edit /etc/sources - add in wheezy as a source instead of squeeze.
deb http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main non-free
###deb http://www.debian-multimedia.org squeeze main non-free
3. - sudo apt-get update
4. - sudo apt-get install firmware-ralink
5. - Before you forget, reverse the comments in sources.list so that you put it back to squeeze and run apt-get update for good measure.
6. - Plug in the wireless dongle.
7. - Should be able to see it in lsusb:-
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 148f:5370 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT5370 Wireless Adapter
8. - edit /etc/network/interfaces
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wireless-essid YourEssID
wireless-mode managed
wireless-key xxxxx
9. - sudo ifup wlan0
If all has worked, we should now be assigned a wireless IP address, and can unplug the ethernet. - Reboot to test.
10. - I then wanted a static IP for this. - This is simply configured in interfaces:-
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
wireless-essid YourEssID
wireless-mode managed
wireless-key xxxxx
address 192.168.2.75
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.2.0
broadcast 192.168.2.255
gateway 192.168.2.1
Note that I'm using WEP here (because some legacy kit doesn't support WPA) - might be slightly different for WPA.
For wpa:
ReplyDeleteRemove wireless-essid/wireless-mode/wireless-key
Add:
wpa-ssid yourssid
wpa-psk yourkey
i would like to mention that you don't need to edit your apt sources.
ReplyDeletejust
wget http://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free/f/firmware-nonfree/firmware-ralink_0.35_all.deb (or another source of your choice)
and
dpkg -i firmware-ralink_0.35_all.deb
does the job too.
Excellent - Many thanks!
Deleteas the link doesn't work anymore - visit
Deletehttp://ftp.de.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free/f/firmware-nonfree/ and pick up the latest firmware-ralink_0.??_all.deb
Regards
Didn't you need a powered USB Hub ?
ReplyDeleteI don't have a powered hub, and the raspberry Pi happily runs the wireless dongle and a wireless keyboard/mouse combo.
ReplyDeleteThanks this got mine working.
ReplyDeleteDoes your lsmod show rt2800usb or rt2870sta?
Everybody says it is suppose to have rt2870sta but I can't find it...
I tried blacklisting rt2800usb and the other similar but then nothing works.
It shows rt2800usb as below:-
Deleteroot@raspberrypi:~# lsmod
Module Size Used by
ipv6 213340 18
fuse 52556 1
arc4 764 2
rt2800usb 9148 0
rt2800lib 37652 1 rt2800usb
crc_ccitt 932 1 rt2800lib
rt2x00usb 6532 1 rt2800usb
rt2x00lib 26104 3 rt2800usb,rt2800lib,rt2x00usb
mac80211 182800 3 rt2800lib,rt2x00usb,rt2x00lib
cfg80211 124592 2 rt2x00lib,mac80211
Thanks for the tut, but having trouble. Go through all the steps, everything goes alright until I run sudo ifup wlan0 and nothing really happens?
ReplyDeleteHave I set up the network interfaces right?
I have this wireless stick http://www.7dayshop.com/catalog/product_info.php?cPath=777_9&products_id=112046 recommended from the wiki as working in Wheezy
http://cl.ly/HsAc
http://cl.ly/Hrz1
Should also point out that this is the first time I've ever really used linux/command line
That dongle doesn't look the same as the one I got from Ebay, though I suspect that it's loaded some modules for this card since it is trying to get an address via DHCP, but I'm no expert....
DeleteI'd start from the beginning. Do 'lsusb' and find out what device is acutally used in this dongle. - e.g. RT5370.
Then, use 'lsmod' to see if it's loaded a module for it.
Next try 'iwlist', or 'iwlist wlan0' to see if it thinks it can see any access points - at least that way you know it can 'see' the wlan.
Also try 'dmesg' to see if that gives any further output which is helpful to your debugging.
Finally, check that your router / access point is accessible to all MAC addresses? Failing that, try the forum on raspberrypi.org.
this article so far has been my only hope as I've been spent 2-3 hours trying to get this damned dongle to work. Please edit this line to include that you are editing /etc/apt/sources.list.. I .. think this is right.
ReplyDeleteok so believe that I followed your instructions and recognized a few points.
ReplyDelete1) the steps outlined here will not allow for you to use the wireless device in xwin.
2) The step that includes "rolling back" whatever adjustments you did with regards to setting the sources from wheezy to squeeze does not actually cause this to work. (Doing this actually caused the wireless device to stop working)
3) The device will work with the specific list of tasks after loading xwin. If you load xwin and log out (if you've installed gnome network manager) will mean the network device is inaccessible.
Light is still green, but you must unplug the network device to be able to interrupt ping / iwconfig, etc..
Anyway, I really appreciate the work you put into this.. I would pay you 20 bucks if you could help me figure out how to get this working in xwin.
Xwin managed to find my local network if I didn't edit the /etc/network/interfaces file, but it was not able to connect.
I have spent about 6 hours on this, and being able to access the internet through the shell has been about as good as it gets. I'm not even going to start on the whole hope that I could get raspbmc to work to make this into a htpc.
Zack. I think I'm a little confused over terminology here. I think where you say 'xwin' you mean xwindows, rather than 'xwin' X-server running on a PC for example. That being the case, then I think you first need to confirm that the wireless device is actually getting an IP address assigned (by DHCP), and that you are initially able to ping your router.
DeleteFor example ifconfig should show something similar to :-
wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 7c:dd:90:0b:40:2f
inet addr:192.168.2.75 Bcast:192.168.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
If this works, and you have an assigned IP address, can you ping your router or anything else on the network? If that works, at least you know you have a connection.....
Then, to connect to the internet, there needs to be a default route which points to your router. - in my case, router has named itself 'BTHomehub.com', and this is set as the default route seen here.
root@raspberrypi:~# netstat -r
Kernel IP routing table
Destination Gateway Genmask Flags MSS Window irtt Iface
default BThomehub.home 0.0.0.0 UG 0 0 0 wlan0
192.168.2.0 * 255.255.255.0 U 0 0 0 wlan0
I guess it's possible that DHCP hasn't set this, or you have it configured static.
I'm unfamiliar with how you might force this to be recognised by Gnome network manager if it's not working once in xwindows I'm afraid. - I suspect you've already got the basics working as above, but unsure. Maybe try posting on the forum on the raspberry pi site as this is unlikely to be specific to the wlan adaptor you are using. - Good luck.
So I was completely mistaken, switching the sources.list back to squeeze and running sudo apt-get update did not remove the wifi abilities. I statically set the IP address and currently am logged in to the Pi via SSH. As far as the xwindows problem, I will likely consult the pi forum for any additional information about how to get this working in xwindows. Thank you so much for the article!
DeleteHi - I am having problems trying to connect a RPi to the Internet via a wireless Dongle. I can do up to Step 8 fine. however I then get a warning message 'unknown mime-type for "/etc/network/interfaces" -- using "application/octet-stream". There is also an error message 'no write permission for file "/etc/network/interfaces".
DeleteAny help is appreciated!
Sounds like you are not using a suitable command to edit the /etc/network/interfaces file. - Try:-
Deletesudo vi /etc/network/interfaces
pi@raspberrypi /etc/network $ sudo ifup wlan0
ReplyDeletewpa_supplicant: /sbin/wpa_supplicant daemon failed to start
run-parts: /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wpasupplicant exited with return code 1
Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client 4.2.2
Copyright 2004-2011 Internet Systems Consortium.
All rights reserved.
For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/
Cannot find device "wlan0"
Bind socket to interface: No such device
Failed to bring up wlan0.
Any idea what im doing wrong?
I suspect that for some reason, the device isn't being seen. You can check with 'lsusb' and 'lsmod' to see if you have the same device as stated here. With the latest build of debian, no additional steps were needed to get this recognised as stated.
Delete