Getting the DWA 125 Wireless Dongle to Work in Ubuntu 10.04 LTS

I have a laptop with networking interfaces eth0 (Atheros AR8152) and wlan0 (Broadcom 4727) which are not supported by the kernel version of 10.04 LTS (2.6.32-21-generic). I needed a kernel version 2.6.37 or higher to get these 2 interfaces working. But since I had no Internet connection, the best way, based on the answer(s) to my query, was to download the kernel manually from http://packages.ubuntu.com and install it in it's binary (.deb) format. When I tried searching for them in the package site, I saw that these linux-generic or linux-*-generic files had multiple dependencies so I thought twice of installing them this way. Dependencies is actually one of the top reason why I get freaked out about installing Linux distros without an Internet connection.

Then I had one last card up my sleeve. I had this old D-Link DWA 125 wireless dongle lying around so I stuck it into the USB port of my laptop and restarted the computer. I was excited after the reboot as the ifconfig -a command showed an entry for the wlan0 interface and it was corresponding to the dongle because the MAC was the same. But another problem arose; the dongle was detected alright but it wasn't alive. The led light was not blinking and Network Manager wasn't showing any WiFi hotspots (much less the WiFi hotspot I own) in it's menu. So there was something wrong with it. And when hardware doesn't work out, it's most likely the drivers have been effed up.

Searching the internet, I came across a site (or PDF file)^[1] that will help me with my problem. Basically, I did what's written in the guide but had to improvise a bit. Since I had no internet connection via my laptop, I had to use a different computer to download the driver for the dongle.

I went to this FTP site to download the .tar.gz file. In my case, I downloaded the DRIVER_LINUX_DWA-125_STA_v2.1.2.0.tar.gz file. I then copied the file to the ~/tmp directory of my Ubuntu-run laptop and then did the ff. commands in succession:

~/tmp$ tar -xzvf DRIVER_LINUX_DWA-125_STA_v2.1.2.0.tar.gz
~/tmp$ cd 2009_1204_RT3070_Linux_STA_v2.1.2.0
~/tmp/2009_1204_RT3070_Linux_STA_v2.1.2.0$ make
~/tmp/2009_1204_RT3070_Linux_STA_v2.1.2.0$ sudo make install
~/tmp/2009_1204_RT3070_Linux_STA_v2.1.2.0$ echo "blacklist rt2800usb" | sudo tee --append /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

So basically, I extracted the archive and it created the 2009_1204_RT3070_Linux_STA_v2.1.2.0 directory. I then went inside this directory and issued the make command. After that was done, I issued the sudo make install then the last command basically blacklists the driver that was run previously; the driver that gave the "fake" wlan0 interface entry but wouldn't connect.

After doing all those things above, reboot your computer and the D-Link DWA 125 wireless adapter should be working. You'll know because the led light blinks and Network Manager finally picks up the WiFi hotspots.

References: ^[1]http://people.scs.carleton.ca/~barbeau/Linux/DWA_125_and_Ubuntu%20_10_04.pdf