Features/AE1000usb

= AE1000 usb wifi Driver =

Summary
This driver will add support to the rt3572usb driver for the AE1000 usb wifi card. [note: The rt2800usb driver incorporates the AE1000 device in Fedora 16 now.]

Owner

 * Name: David Dreggors
 * Email: 

Current status

 * Targeted release: Fedora 17
 * Last updated: 2/24/2012
 * Percentage of completion: 100%

Detailed Description
The goal is to add a driver for the AE1000 usb wifi card. To do this I had to use the GPL source code available from Ralinktech's site and create the patches needed to add support for the device id of this device as well as enabling the built in support for WPA Supplicant and the LED lights. The next step was to build a spec file and package this as a Fedora RPM.

Benefit to Fedora
The obvious benefit is that we (the Fedora community) have the ability to use a commonly used, commodity wifi device.

Scope
The work on this driver has already been done and is a ready for testing. Since this is a kmod driver using GPL code the scope is limited to adding a driver to the kernel modules that does not exist, and adding supporting conf files for weak modules and for setting the alias of the device.

Test Requirements

 * AE1000 usb wifi card
 * Fedora 16 with:
 * kernel-devel package
 * rpmdevtools package
 * rpm-build package
 * c++ compiler and build tools (gcc, gcc-c++, make, etc..)
 * Basic command line knowledge
 * rpmbuild knowledge
 * The src rpm file

Steps to test
First you will need to do some prep to get your environment ready.

Let's start by opening gnome-terminal, konsole (if KDE), or switch to another tty (tty2-tty6 are safe options). Next while in your home directory, run the 'rpmdev-setuptree' command. This will create your rpmbuild environment so that you can build the rpm. The whole process should look like this:

[user@host ~ ]$ rpmdev-setuptree [user@host ~ ]$ tree rpmbuild rpmbuild ├── BUILD ├── RPMS ├── SOURCES ├── SPECS └── SRPMS

5 directories, 0 files

Now you will need to install the src rpm file to get the source code, the patches, and the spec file to build the rpm.

If you did not get the src rpm file above, you can download the src.rpm file from here.

While in the terminal, as your user, run the 'rpm' command to install the src rpm file into your 'rpmbuild' directory we created above. Again this will give you all files needed to build the rpm on your system.

[user@host ~ ]$ rpm -i rt3572sta-kmod-2.5.0.0-1.fc16.src.rpm‎ [user@host ~ ]$

Now if look, you should have all the needed files under your 'rpmbuild' directories SOURCES, and SPECS folders. We are ready to build the rpm! That can be built using a simple 'rpmbuild' command as follows:

[user@host ~ ]$ cd ~/rpmbuild [user@host ~ ]$ rpmbuild -ba SPECS/rt3572sta-kmod.spec

You will see a lot of output while rpmbuild compiles the driver. If you have the kernel-devel package installed, a suitable compiler and make... all should go well and you should end up with a new rpm under your '~/rpmbuild/RPMS/' folder.

You are ready to finally install the actual driver from the rpm you just created. Using yum you can install the rpm as follows:

[user@host ~ ]$ sudo yum localinstall ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/x86_64/kmod-rt3572sta-2.5.0.0-1.fc16.x86_64.rpm

or (depending on your CPU architecture):

[user@host ~ ]$ sudo yum localinstall ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/i686/kmod-rt3572sta-2.5.0.0-1.fc16.x86_64.rpm

If all goes well you should be able now to reboot and Fedora should see your usb wifi card and let you start setting it up in NetworkManager.

User Experience
The experience should be that you have a working usb wifi card now, when you did not before. That (I assume) equates to a great experience (or at least good). ;-)

Dependencies
None.

Contingency Plan
None necessary.

Documentation
The process to patch and build this driver was first seen in the Fedora forum. It was not packaged, but simply showed what needed patching and how to build. My posts to create patches and package as a src rpm file can be seen on the 3rd page of that discussion.

Release Notes
This release is a first release for Fedora.

Comments and Discussion

 * See Talk:Features/AE1000usb