upon installing the development version of the driver rt61 (which is the correct driver for linksys wmp54G ver. 4.1 wireless adapter), gentoo recognized a wireless card, but doesn't know exactly what it is and won't connect to any networks (even unencrypted ones) when running lspci, I get this description of the card: # lspci 0000:02:07.0 Network controller: RaLink: Unknown device 0301 After installing the driver, and inserting the module into the kernel, I did the following, which I got from the Gentoo web page, to try and get it up and running: symbolically linked /etc/init.d/net.ra0 to /etc/init.d/net.lo as such: #ln -s /etc/init.d/net.lo /etc/init.d/net.ra0 started net.ra0 # ./net.ra0 start * Bringing ra0 up... [ ok ] This, of course, says nothing of dhcp or that it acquired an ethernet address. So of course, this step, which is supposed to connect me (with no configuration in /etc/conf.d/net) to the "strongest unencrypted access point" as stated in the wireless configuration notes on gentoo.org I'm puzzled as to how this is even supposed to work in the first place, as linking net.ra0 to net.lo doesn't create a separate init script. My other card, net.eth0, has it's own init script, and it works fine. I would think I would need one specially designed for ra0, but don't know how to do that. Please help clarify my confusion more important info: iwconfig recognizes the device ra0 after the module is installed in the kernel: # iwconfig lo no wireless extensions. eth0 no wireless extensions. ra0 RT61 Wireless ESSID:"" Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Bit Rate=54 Mb/s RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Link Quality=0/100 Signal level:-121 dBm Noise level:-111 dBm Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0 And after installing the module, gentoo still doesn't know much about the card other than it is a RaLink chipset: #lspci 0000:02:07.0 Network controller: RaLink: Unknown device 0301 #emerge --info Portage 2.1-r2 (default-linux/x86/2006.0, gcc-20050130, glibc-2.3.4.20041102-r1, 2.6.11-gentoo-r6 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.11-gentoo-r6 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.90GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.4.16 app-admin/eselect-compiler: [Not Present] dev-lang/python: 2.3.5 dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5 dev-util/ccache: [Not Present] dev-util/confcache: [Not Present] sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.11 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r6 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.5 sys-devel/binutils: 2.15.92.0.2-r7 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.3.10-r2 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.16 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.8.1-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.2/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/env /usr/kde/3.3/share/config /usr/kde/3.3/shutdown /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/gconf /etc/terminfo" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium4 -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks metadata-transfer sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo/ http://gentoo.chem.wisc.edu/gentoo ftp://cudlug.cudenver.edu/pub/mirrors/distributions/gentoo/ http://212.219.247.21/sites/www.ibiblio.org/gentoo/" MAKEOPTS=" -j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats --timeout=180 --exclude='/distfiles' --exclude='/local' --exclude='/packages'" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X alsa apache2 apm arts avi berkdb bitmap-fonts cdr cli crypt cups dlloader dri dvd eds emboss encode esd foomaticdb fortran gdbm gif gnome gpm gstreamer gtk gtk2 howl imlib ipv6 isdnlog jpeg kde kerberos libg++ libwww mad mikmod motif mp3 mpeg ncurses nls nptl ogg opengl oss pam pcre pdflib perl png ppds pppd python qt qt3 qt4 quicktime readline reflection samba scanner sdl session spell spl ssl tcpd truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev usb vorbis x86 xml xmms xorg xv zlib elibc_glibc input_devices_keyboard input_devices_mouse input_devices_evdev kernel_linux userland_GNU" Unset: CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
Upgrade your baselayout to latest stable version and read /etc/conf.d/wireless.example before filing any baselayou-related bugs. Your system is pretty outdated.
