How to install a D-Link DWA-525 wireless network card in Ubuntu 10.04

I was having an issue with an old network card in my Ubuntu machine (x86 arch), so I went out and got a new one that supports 802.11n. It’s been some time since I swapped out hardware, and Linux has matured greatly since then: the last install of Ubuntu detected everything perfectly, first time, including the network devices!

Not so for this network card. After much searching it turns out it’s actually unsupported [1] out of the box. Bah! I finally found the information I need to get it running. This article is a combination of several articles [2], [3], [4], I had to borrow bits and pieces from all of them, listed below.

Here’s how to get up and running with the D-Link DWA-525 on Ubuntu 10.04:

1. Install the card and power up the machine.

2. Open the terminal and run

lspci


In the list you will see:

Network Controller: Ralink Device 3060 0


So now we know what device we need drivers for.

3. Go to http://www.ralinktech.com/support.php?s=2 http://www.ralinktech.com/en/04_support/license.php?sn=5019 and download the RT3062PCI/mPCI/CB/PCIe(RT3060/RT3062/RT3562/RT3592) drivers.

You’ll be prompted for your name and email but you don’t need to sign into anything.

4. Extract the package and cd to the directory.

5. We need to make a slight modification to the configuration for the driver:

nano os/linux/config.mk


And set:

# Support Wpa_Supplicant
HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT=y

# Support Native WpaSupplicant for Network Manager
HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=y


By default they are both set to ‘n’. Save and close the file.

6. From the top level directory, compile and install the driver:

sudo su
make && make install

You need to use ‘sudo su’ and not just ‘sudo’ so it creates the directories properly.

7. After compilation, and whist still root, modprobe the driver:

modprobe rt3562sta


You should get no output signalling success.

8. Now an important step. We need to blacklist a conflicting driver that will be loaded preferentially for this network card.

sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf


and enter the following line at the bottom of the file:

blacklist rt2800pci


Save and close.

9. Restart the machine.

10. When the machine is back up, verify the driver has been loaded and is being used by the device:

lsmod


You should see the following in the list:

rt3562sta     924607     1


11. Now, launch the Network Manager and it should have detected the available wireless networks and you can configure the one you want.

References, in order of usefulness:

[1] https://help.ubuntu.com/community/HardwareSupportComponentsWirelessNetworkCardsDlink
[2] http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php?p=10055176&postcount=4
[3] http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1045703
[4] http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1559576