[SOLVED] Wireless adapter disappeared after updating

[Traumaturge]

Installed from a LiveCD. Using Mageia 3 64-bit with GNOME and NetworkManager.

I have been ignoring the update notifications for a while, but yesterday I got around to updating. 205 packages in all. When I restarted, not only was the network disconnected, the wireless adapter didn't even show up in NM. The driver still seems to be there. The file I built is still at /etc/Wireless/RA2860STA/RA2860STA.dat. wpa_supplicant.conf still has the SSID and password. (Note that I actually have no idea how to use wpa_supplicant itself.) But the device ID, ra0, doesn't seem to exist. Not in /dev, not in dmesg, or anywhere else I've looked.

I have the very troublesome Ralink 5592. It's supposed to be related to the 2860 series, but the appropriate driver package doesn't work with this model in particular. The leading expert on the 5592, aka some guy on an Arch forum, made a patch to the driver supplied by the manufacturer. I used the patch to successfully build and install the driver before updating.

EDIT: another odd thing happened after the update. Two new boot options appeared in GRUB, labeled desktop3.8.13-1.mg3 and
desktop3.8.13.4-1.mg3. Don't know whether this has any bearing on the wireless issue.

Since I'm fairly new to Linux and don't know much about networking, I have a feeling I'm missing something basic. Thanks for bearing with me.

[jiml8]

Evidently your updates included a kernel update. Also evidently you have a patched driver, or alternatively you are using a driver you downloaded and installed from someplace else.

Your problem is that the kernel update eliminated your driver. Your choices are to either accept the grub choice to use the earlier kernel, or to patch the driver source in the new kernel, recompile and reinstall into the new kernel.

[doktor5000]

The driver still seems to be there. The file I built is still at /etc/Wireless/RA2860STA/RA2860STA.dat.

The file you built from what?

You probably want to install the correct firmware package for this, it's called ralink-firmware from the nonfree repository:

Code: Select all

[doktor5000@Mageia3 ~]$ urpmf 2860 | grep firmware | sort -u
ralink-firmware:/lib/firmware/rt2860.bin

[doktor5000@Mageia3 ~]$ urpmf -f --name -m ralink-firmware
ralink-firmware-20130307-1.mga3.nonfree.noarch:Nonfree Release
ralink-firmware-20130307-1.mga3.nonfree.noarch:Nonfree 32bit Release

[Traumaturge]

jiml8 was right. All I needed to do was recompile the driver file before installing the module. I don't understand exactly why that worked, since I didn't change anything in the source or Makefile.

doktor5000: I built it from the manufacturer-supplied software using Makefile, and the patch I mentioned in the OP. It's known that this chipset in particular doesn't work with the official firmware package.

Marking this as solved, thanks everyone.

[jiml8]

It worked because plugin modules for the kernel (which includes drive modules that are not built into the kernel - such as your particular module) are kept in an appropriate subdirectory under /lib/modules/kernelversion where kernelversion is the particular kernel you are using. If you have multiple kernels available on your system, you will have multiple kernelversion subdirectories. Do an "ls /lib/modules" and you will see.

When your kernel is loaded and the required modules are loaded, those modules will be taken from the appropriate kernelversion subdirectory.

So what happens here is that you upgrade your system, which installs a new kernel and a new kernelversion subdirectory in /lib/modules. And this new kernelversion directory does not contain your driver. When you recompile and reinstall the driver, it gets installed into the kernelversion subdirectory that matches the running kernel.

[doktor5000]

doktor5000: I built it from the manufacturer-supplied software using Makefile, and the patch I mentioned in the OP. It's known that this chipset in particular doesn't work with the official firmware package.

Well then best open a bug report for that so that maybe the patch can be included in the driver - after searching if it hasn't been reported yet already: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/How_to_report_a_bug_properly