Today I want to make my Cisco Linksys WUSB100 Wireless N USB Adapter work on Raspberry Pi. In ELinux RPi Verified Peripherals page this USB Wi-Fi dongle is listed as problematic and making it to work is quite a challenge. My own USB key is exactly the one listed there with idVendor=”1737” e idProduct=”0078” identified as Linksys (Cisco) WUSB100 ver.2.

Software installation

As I noted in my previous post I’m using Raspbian, the Linux distribution recommended in the Raspberry Pi official download page. For using the Wi-Fi USB key we need at least the software for managing Wi-Fi networks and the firmware for the USB Wi-Fi key: specifically the WUSB100 ver.2 is based on the RT-3070 Ralink chipset. This USB key is supported by the rt2800usb driver actually present in the official Raspberry Pi linux kernel once you provide the firmware binary blob. All the following commands must be run as root.

So let us install the needed packages:

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$ apt-get install wireless-tools wpasupplicant firmware-ralink

Software configuration

Now we have all the needed software but still the Wi-Fi USB will not appear as device wlan0 we need to make it working: it is time of some udev voodoo and finally things should work.

First we need to edit file /etc/udev/rules.d/network_drivers.rules

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$ nano /etc/udev/rules.d/network_drivers.rules

and then add as a single line the following:

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ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="1737", ATTR{idProduct}=="0078", RUN+="/sbin/modprobe -qba rt2800usb"

Double check you wrote it right, save and close. Then we need to edit /etc/modprobe.d/network_drivers.conf

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$ nano /etc/modprobe.d/network_drivers.conf

and then add the following as a single line:

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install rt2800usb /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install rt2800usb $CMDLINE_OPTS; /bin/echo "1737 0078" > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/rt2800usb/new_id

Network setup

Finally you need to modify /etc/network/interfaces to reflect the new interface addition adding something similar to:

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# my wifi device
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
  wireless-essid [ACCESS_POINT_SSID]
  wireless-mode Managed
  wireless-key [YOUR_SECRET_WEP_PASSWORD]

or

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# my wifi device
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
  wpa-ssid [ACCESS_POINT_SSID]
  wpa-psk [YOUR_SECRET_WPA_PASSWORD]

If you write your password in /etc/network/interfaces please keep it permission tight:

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$ chmod 0600 /etc/network/interfaces

Reboot and final checks

Now reboot and everything should be fine: finally you will see the wlan0 device appearing if you run ifconfig:

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$ ifconfig -a

With all these steps my Cisco Linksys WUSB100 Wireless N USB Adapter is working and stable during last 8 hours with moderate network traffic: I did not stress test it yet… if I will found something unusual I will let you know.

Is this setup working for you? Do you have any problem? Use comments below to leave a feedback and I will try to help you!