Installing Edimax EW-7711UMn Driver on Ubuntu 10.04

Edimax EW-7711UMn drivers are not automatically recognized by Ubuntu. However, driver can be built and installed on your operating system in by following steps below.

1.Do not insert your EW-7711UMn until I say so. If you've inserted, remove it and reboot your os before continuing.

2.Download driver file from www.ralinktech.com

1.EW-7711UMn uses RT3070 chipset

2.Go to support page, find corresponding driver

3.Ralink released a generic driver which support both RT5370 and RT3070 and etc. so compiled driver file name might be different than RT3070. This is OK.

3.Extract driver to a folder (we'll assume the root folder is Ralink)

1. gedit Ralink/os/linux/config.mk

1. Change HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT=n to

HAS_WPA_SUPPLICANT=y

2. Change HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=n to

HAS_NATIVE_WPA_SUPPLICANT_SUPPORT=y (This will enable Ubuntu's Built-in Network Manager access to the device)

2. sudo make

3. If any problem occurs on compilation see README_STA_usb file located inside Ralink folder.

4. sudo make install

This will install driver module files onto the linux kernel

1. Check Ralink/os/linux/*.ko

2. It should contain a file named rtXXXXsta.ko (in my case it is rt5370sta.ko)

3. This file should have been installed as kernel module

4. Try on command line if it succeeded. (Do not execute the command yet!) Type

insmod rt5370 [and then press TAB]

terminal should automatically complete it.

5. Clear the command line

5. Insert your Edimax EW-7711UMn into your USB at this point

6. You can check if the driver is loaded by issuing

lsmod | grep rt

result should contain something like rt53xxx , rt30xx

7. If lsmod result contains rt28xxx type modules instead of rt53xxx, it is most likely that wrong driver is automatically loaded by Linux. Test by first unloading the wrong modules. If it succeeds we'll blacklist invalid drivers. My computer loaded rt2x00usb , rt2x00lib , rt2800usb , rt2870sta and driver module name is rt5370sta.ko So example below will unload / load these drivers.

1. Remove Edimax EW-7711UMn

2. sudo rmmod rt2800usb

3. sudo rmmod rt2870sta

4. sudo rmmod rt2x00usb

5. sudo rmmod rt2x00lib

6. sudo insmod rt5370sta.ko

7. lsmod | grep rt

Result should contain rt5370sta but not rt2xxx

8. Insert Edimax EW-7711UMn

9. You should be able to connect your preferred wireless network using Network Manager at this moment.

10. If your connection is successful, then we should blacklist invalid drivers permanently. (If you reboot now, invalid drivers will be loaded again)

8.Blacklist invalid drivers

1. gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

2. Add the lines below to the blacklist.conf

blacklist rt2x00usb

blacklist rt2x00lib

blacklist rt2800usb

blacklist rt2870sta

3.Save the file

4. Reboot

Enjoy...