My Hell With RT5370!

Every had that one technical problem that you have tried everything you can think of but just can not get it to damm work well this past week has been my hell for the raspberry pi and the RT5370 wireless adapter.

ONLY TESTED ON RASPXBMC

1. - The package firmware-ralink from the Debian Squeeze install doesn't work - it doesn't contain the right firmware.

2 - Copy and paste

sudo wget http://ftp.uk.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free/f/firmware-nonfree/firmware-ralink_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb

3. - INSTALL THE FIRMWARE

CODE

sudo dpkg --install firmware-ralink_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb

4. -  reverse the comments in sources.list so that you put it back to squeeze and run apt-get update for good measure.

5. Install package wpasupplicant & usb utils and wireless tools for lsusb and iwconfig

CODE

sudo apt-get install wpasupplicant usbutils wireless-tools

6. Create a config file:

CODE

sudo nano /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

with the following content - dont forget to change the SSID to your wireless network name and the PSK to your wireless password

CODE

ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
ctrl_interface_group=0
update_config=1

network={
  ssid="network_id"
  psk="password"
  proto=WPA
  key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
  pairwise=TKIP
  group=TKIP
  id_str="Nickname"
}

NOTE: The critical change (for WPA-PSK) I had to make from those advised elsewhere was to change "proto=RSN" to "proto=WPA"

7. Modify the interfaces file:

CODE

sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

to use the wpa configuration, like:

CODE

auto wlan0
  iface wlan0 inet dhcp
  wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

8 Then restart the interface:

CODE

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

If you get any failures please type  mkdir -p /var/run/network  and then do

CODE

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

This correctly obtained an IP address from the DHCP server and worked for me :)