ASUS A8V Deluxe Wireless Edition on Debian GNU/Linux

Here are instructions on how to set up wireless network on Debian 3.1 GNU/Linux if you have the ASUS A8V Deluxe Wireless Edition with the ASUS WIFI-g card. This card has the Ralink RT2500 chipset, so we need to install the driver. These instructions should also work if you have another device with the RT2500 chipset.

I have made these instructions for Debian with the 2.6 kernel. If you have a 2.4 kernel you should only need to modify the version string in the appropriate places. You can check your kernel version by running the command:

uname -r

IMPORTANT:This driver does not work with SMP kernels, even on single CPU systems. The driver is bundled with KNOPPIX, but causes a system freeze for me even with the "nosmp" boot parameter to the kernel. The developers are working on a new driver that should work on SMP systems, but as far as I know it is not functional as of 2005/10/23.

Here are the steps to follow:

Install and set up the Linux kernel source:

apt-get install kernel-source-2.6.8
cd /usr/src/
tar xvfj kernel-source-2.6.8.tar.bz2
cd kernel-source-2.6.8
cp /boot/config-2.6.8-2-386 .config
make oldconfig
make
cd /lib/modules/2.6.8-2-386
ln -sf /usr/src/linux build
ln -sf /usr/src/linux source

Unpack and compile the driver:

cd /usr/src
tar xvfz rt2500-1.1.0-b3.tar.gz
cd rt2500-1.1.0-b3/Module
make
make install
cp /lib/modules/2.6.8/extra/rt2500.ko /lib/modules/2.6.8-2-386/kernel/drivers/net/
depmod -a

Set up the module:

echo alias ra0 rt2500 > /etc/modutils/rt2500
update-modules

Configure the driver. Add something like this to /etc/network/interfaces. Read the documentation to get it right:

auto ra0
iface ra0 inet dhcp
	wireless-essid HOMENET
	wireless_key1 ABCDEF1234
	wireless_key2 12345ABCDE
	wireless_key3 1A2B3C4D5E
	wireless_key4 FFEEDDCCBB
	wireless_defaultkey 1

Start the network:
```
invoke-rc.d networking start
```