Ubuntu – Wireless driver – how to load manufacturer’s STA file (Ralink 3290)

driversralinkwireless

Caution: I'm a newb.

Hardware: Giada i35G, cedar trail atom with Nvidia gf119, railtek ethernet and Ralink 3290 for wireless.

Already accomplished: Installed Ubuntu 12.10, loaded GPU drivers and redirected sound out through GPU card to HDMI. Ethernet works like a charm.

Issue: Can't get my wireless up and running. There seems to be no package to which I can simply run a sudo apt-get install.

I found the corresponding Linux driver from the manufacturer's site, but I have not managed to find out what to with the file.
Here's the manufacturers site.
I get a file with the following name: \2012_0508_RT3290_Linux_STA_v2.6.0.0.bz2

I hope somebody might be able to tell me what to do next.

Thanks for reading and apologies for potentially asking a trivial question.

Best regards,
Matt

Best Answer

First, right-click the file and select Rename. Rename it to 2012_0508_RT3290_Linux_STA_v2.6.0.0.tar.bz2; that is, without the leading slash and adding .tar. Now right-click it and select Extract Here. Open the file os/linux/config.mk with any text editor and change the line:

HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=n

...to

HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=y

Proofread, save and close the text editor. Now, with a temporary ethernet connection, do:

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-generic
cd Desktop/DPO_RT3290_LinuxSTA_V2600_20120508

...or wherever you extracted the package, if not your desktop.

sudo su
make
make install
modprobe rt3290sta
exit

Please post any errors, questions, etc. Warnings are alright. Your question and this process are in no way trivial.

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