F9: Compiled and created rt2870sta.ko, but where to install?
Kevin Kofler
kevin.kofler at chello.at
Tue Jul 15 02:03:14 UTC 2008
Dan Thurman <dant <at> cdkkt.com> writes:
> I obtained the rt2870 software from:
> http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/Support/Linux.html
> and the specific file I downloaded was: RT2870USB(RT2870/RT2870)
>
<http://www.ralinktech.com.tw/data/drivers/2008_0528_RT2870_Linux_STA_v1.3.0.0.tar.bz2>
>
> From what I can tell, it is an Open-Source Organization and I
> did not see any licensing in regards to the code i.e. I do not
> think I recall having to click on any license agreements.
It is GPL (version 2 or later), but unfortunately the driver appears to be
using either the legacy WiFi stack or a custom one, not the mac80211 stack
which all new drivers are supposed to use. (They state in the README file that
they're still supporting RHL 7.3. :-/ Of course there's no mac80211 in such
ancient kernels.) It is not based on the mac80211-based rt2x00 driver. What
this means for you is that:
* the driver probably cannot be merged as is into the upstream kernel, so you
will have to either build it yourself or rely on a third-party repository and
* it might be hard to build the driver with current kernels.
On the other hand, not many manufacturers release drivers under the GPL, so I
should probably not complain too much.
Kevin Kofler
More information about the users
mailing list