Ralink RT2860

This article aims to setup pci WiFi adaptors based on Ralink RT2860 chip.

Recently, RT2870 support is greatly improved, which is a chip for USB WiFi cards. See Ralink RT2870.

Kernel Configuration
Kernel level network setup must include:

Since kernel 3.0 the rt2860 staging driver has been removed. You have to switch to the rt2x00/rt2800 driver. You still need the firmware to use this module. You can get it from either RaLink (ralinktech.com.tw) but on their webpage (it seems to be only available from time to time) I only found version 26 of the firmware. In the debian ralink-firmware package I found version 34. (http://packages.debian.org/sid/all/firmware-ralink/download)

Some modules were required, so that the rt2800pci module worked but weren't automatically depended on, like the "PHY device support" and the "Common routines for IEEE802.11 drivers" and the "cfg80211 wireless extensions compatibilty"

This should be everything necessary to have functional wlan driver. The firmware should be place by default into "/lib/firmware".

Building and Installing the Module
Download and unpack the driver from the Ralink website (the archive is actually gzipped). At the time of this writing, the current version was 2.3.0.0; this version adds support for kernels 2.6.31 and 2.6.32.

The Makefile shouldn't require any modifications; it defaults to a Linux-x86/2860 build.

Edit the file os/linux/config.mk and change HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT and HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT to y if you intend to use a wireless network manager.

In the same file, remove -DDBG from WFLAGS to prevent the driver from spewing junk all over your dmesg.

Now build the module.

When compilation is complete, install it.

The new module will be called rt2860sta, located in. Installation also creates a junk file called tftpboot in your root directory which you can safely delete.

Load the new kernel module and/or add it to /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6

Configuration
The network device will be called ra0. It can be configured by a utility like NetworkManager, by WPA Supplicant or wireless-tools, or by the configuration file in /etc/Wireless/RT2860STA/RT2860STA.dat. When configuring with wicd or wpa_supplicant, be sure to use the "wext" driver, not "Ralink Legacy".

Capabilities/Limitations
This driver has been tested and confirmed compatible with open (unencrypted), WEP, WPA-PSK, and WPA2-PSK networks.

The driver has limited functionality with the Kismet wireless detection/packet capturing software. While scanning and capturing work with the rt2500 source, channel hopping does not. The detection channel must be set via command line when the kismet server launches.

Rt2860