Tenda W311U and Debian

[Giles Orr]

On 6 May 2010 09:04, Lennart Sorensen <lsorense-1wCw9BSqJbv44Nm34jS7GywD8/FfD2ys at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> On Wed, May 05, 2010 at 10:51:11PM -0400, Giles Orr wrote:
>> I purchased two Tenda W311U wireless-N USB sticks this past weekend.
>> I bought the second because they were $15US and the first one "just
>> worked" (well - I had to blacklist a kernel module) with Ubuntu Karmic
>> on an older Dell laptop.  Unfortunately I'm having a great deal less
>> luck with Debian (squeeze, kernel 2.6.32 - in this case on an Atom
>> netbook, but similar behaviour on an older Compaq Pavilion with
>> Celeron 1133 and squeeze).
>>
>> When I plug it in, the stick is recognized:
>>
>> [   33.784132] usb 1-2: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3
>> [   33.941924] usb 1-2: New USB device found, idVendor=148f, idProduct=3070
>> [   33.949060] usb 1-2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
>> [   33.956238] usb 1-2: Product: 802.11 n WLAN
>> [   33.963380] usb 1-2: Manufacturer: Ralink
>> [   33.970477] usb 1-2: SerialNumber: 1.0
>> [   33.979437] usb 1-2: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice
>> [   34.062544] rt2870sta: module is from the staging directory, the
>> quality is unknown, you have been warned.
>> [   34.088727] rtusb init --->
>> [   34.092826]
>> [   34.092829]
>> [   34.092831] === pAd = f8c37000, size = 566752 ===
>> [   34.092834]
>> [   34.106437] <-- RTMPAllocAdapterBlock, Status=0
>> [   34.112838] usbcore: registered new interface driver rt2870
>>
>> And the kernel modules are loaded (rt2870sta and a dependency).  I've
>> blacklisted rt2800usb as that was required under Ubuntu - it would
>> load that as well as rt2870sta and the stick wouldn't work.  I've also
>> installed the package "firmware-ralink" which includes
>> /lib/firmware/rt2870.bin .  I'm getting the same behaviour on the
>> Celeron laptop, although I haven't tested with firmware on that one.
>>
>> Any thoughts?
>
> Is the hardware revision the same on both?
>
> Do both sticks work with ubuntu and both fail with debian?
>
> In fact is it not working?  Nothing in what you wrote shows anything
> wrong.

Sorry, I didn't say: what's wrong is that I have no network interface
despite the appearance that everything is working correctly.  I've
tried "ifconfig ra0 up" as root (that's the interface name that showed
on the Ubuntu laptop) just in case that would help, but it didn't.

You're also correct that I should check both sticks with the Ubuntu
laptop to verify that they both work and see if I can determine if
they're functionally the same.  I'll try to do that tonight.

-- 
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
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