My MSI Wind netbook uses a Ralink RT2700E wireless card for WiFi connectivity. The following are the steps I performed to get it working properly with Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal.
For some reason Ubuntu loads some unneeded drivers for this card which causes it to keep dropping the wireless connection. The correct driver is also loaded, so all we need to do is prevent these extra drivers from loading during boot. To do this we'll create a file called /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-rt2800.conf.
In my example I'm going to use the nano text editor, but feel free to use your favorite. To create and open the file for editing, open a terminal window and enter:
Now enter the following text into the file.
# This is to fix wifi on the MSI Wind with the Ralink RT2700E. blacklist rt2800pci blacklist rt2800lib blacklist rt2x00pci blacklist rt2x00lib
Hit [Ctrl]+[O] to save the file then hit [Ctrl]+[X] to exit. Now only the proper driver will load on the next boot. If you would like to fix the issue before rebooting, enter the following commands.
sudo modprobe rt2860sta
This removes all of the wireless drivers and reloads the correct rt2860sta driver.
Now there's also a bug that prevents the wireless connection from working properly when resuming from suspend or hibernate. To fix this you just need to create an empty file. The following command will create the file for you.
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Hello.
Your fix worked perfectly for my MSI Wind U-100, with Ralink rt2860 on Ubuntu 11.4.
However, in Ubuntu 11.10, the fix actually breaks the wireless - apparently the Ubuntu developers have fixed it.
So in Ubuntu 11.1, I had to comment out the blacklisted modules in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-rt2800.conf:
# This is to fix wifi on the MSI Wind with the Ralink RT2700E.
#blacklist rt2800pci
#blacklist rt2800lib
#blacklist rt2x00pci
#blacklist rt2x00lib
That made it work again. You could probably also just delete the file.
But anyway, your fix helped me stay online for the 11.04 release, thanks so much for writing this.
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Agree. Here my fix on a MSI Wind netbook.
1) sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf
2) (Deleted all wireless blacklist entries - they may be residue from 11.04)
3) (Save)
4) sudo service network-manager restart
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Solution is great for Ubuntu 11.04 but 11.10 doesn't have rt2860sta driver...
Ubuntu 11.10 use all 4 drives rt2800pci rt2x00pci rt2800lib rt2x00lib.
I had problem with hibernation and suspend on my WIND U100 on 11.10.
I installed 11.10 from scratch.
Always when I turn on my netbook after suspend or hibernation panic occured.
Tried a few solutions about swap partiotion but didn't help. I noticed that panic accure directly after wifi reconnected. So I only turned of power management for wifi from your solution:
sudo touch /etc/pm/power.d/wireless
Tried suspend or hibernation few times and works! 🙂
Reconnection to network via wifi of course too. 🙂
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Any updates for this useful information for Oneiric as I am updating http://www.pcurtis.com/wind.htm referenced by Ricky
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I've just started experimenting with Oneiric on my desktop and haven't loaded it onto the Wind yet. I'll write something up if anything changes.
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Thank you very much. Just tried this in Linux Mint 11 and everything seems to be working. Thanks for posting! You have saved me from my headache.
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)ust genius. How did you figure it out? it solved it inmediately. Thank you very much.
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My Wifi was constantly dropping out so I followed this fix to the letter and it works perfectly now.
I have a U100 Wind Notebook and Ubuntu 11.04.
Many thanks!
P.S. Anyone experiencing suspend/resume issues with Wifi and the U100 Wind Notebook / Ubuntu 11.04 combination might find this web page maintained by Peter Curtis useful: http://www.pcurtis.com/wind.htm#natty
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thnks for that =]
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Hey,
thank you so much. These WiFi problems kept bugging me the past months!!
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Thanks for the info.
Have you logged a bug with ubuntu? There could be an incorrect mod-alias that is causing your card to prefer the rt2800 driver - if so the fix would be a trivial file-change and could improve things for others in the future.
I got amazing support from the ubuntu kernel-maintainers for problems I had with my MSI U160 (different card - different driver).
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This is an interesting fix. I suspect something similar is going on with my Broadcom card in my netbook. Just installed Natty (was using windows previously) and the connection will drop without warning but the icon/display says it's still connected. It just stops loading pages entirely and I have to tell it to reconnect manually. It does this every 20min or so.
If this is the issue at stake, where would I find the filenames that I'd need to put in to make my own blacklist file?
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You need to find out what is the correct kernel module for your card. You can list all of the loaded kernel modules with:
You then need to look for the ones that relate to your particular card.
You might be able to find out what the particular chipset is for your card using:
Once you know what particular chip it uses, you can then search the internet in hopes of finding the correct driver.
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thanks this solved my problem