I have an Averatec 5500 series laptop with a WiFi card that uses the Ralink RT2500 chipset. Here are some instructions for getting this card to work correctly in Debian and Ubuntu 8.04.

Although this chipset works fine in Linux, I found that my built-in card was too weak. When connecting to my downstairs wifi router, it got very slow speeds. So, I put down $50 for a Netgear WPN511 PC Card (PCMCIA). I'm just starting to use it, and I'll try to update this page when I have a feel for how well it works (2009-02-16).

Under Debian I have had trouble with lockups, and I suspect the RT2500 drivers.

Today, a new Debian kernal was released. When I boot it, I've lost my WiFi adapter. So, I thought I'd take the opportunity to manually install the latest (legacy) RT2500 driver.

Here's a quick overview of the process I went though.

• List the interfaces, take note

ifconfig

• Grab the latest source
• Unpack it
• Change to Modules directory
• Compile

make clean
make

• Copy the file

cp rt2500.ko /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/net/wireless

• Load the module

depmod
modprobe rt2500

• List the interface. What's new?

ifconfig

• Load the interface.

ifup eth2

Under Ubuntu linux, I also had to do the following, which I got from http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=784031.

• Edit the /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist file and add the following lines.

# blacklist included rt2500 drivers
blacklist rt2x00lib
blacklist rt2x00pci
blacklist rt2500pci

• Become root.

sudo su

• Now compile with the following.

make clean; make; make install

• Then set the kernel to use our preferred modules.

dpkg-reconfigure usplash

• Reboot

At this point, my wireless LED was not on. To turn it on I simply loaded the interface with the following.

sudo ifconfig ra0 up

Note: This might not work. It certainly didn't work in Ubuntu 8.10. You might want to try my instructions for Ubuntu 8.10 first (even in Ubuntu 8.04). See below.

When using the RT2500 under Ubuntu 8.04, I was getting very slow speeds. I right-clicked on the wireless icon in the system tray and selected connection information. There, I found a value of only 1 Mb/s.

To correct that speed problem, I opened /etc/rc.local and added the following two lines.

ifconfig wlan0 up
iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M

After suspending and then resuming, the 1 Mb/s speed comes back. To solve that, I run the iwconfig command above than then stop and start the wireless by right-clicking the icon and selecting Disable then Enable.

You might be able to add the iwconfig command to /etc/ph/sleep.d in order to prevent this work-around.

Place a file called sleep.d in /etc/pm/. Put the following lines in that file.

iwconfig wlan0 rate 54M

That should automatically be executed when the computer wakes up.

When using the RT2500 under Ubuntu 8.10 (Ibex), I was getting very slow speeds. I right-clicked on the wireless icon in the system tray and selected connection information. There, I found a value of only 1 Mb/s.

To correct that speed problem, I created a script at /etc/acpi/resume.d/40-rt2500.sh and added the following lines.

#!/bin/bash
iwconfig wlan0 rate 54

Make sure that the script is exacutable with the following command.

sudo chmod +x /etc/acpi/resume.d/40-rt2500.sh

The script should now run automatically on wake.