I have a nice new Acer Laptop. Please don't flame, it was a great deal. I'm dual-booting the machine, Windows for a few online games, Linux (Kubuntu 6.10 64-bit) for everything else. I have a working USB Wireless Adapter based on the rt73 (RaLink) chip. While testing some other distro possibilities, I have had this rt73 adapter working using ndiswrapper and 32-bit Linux. For those who may not know, Kubuntu 6.10 Etch is a KDE desktop, has a modular kernel version 2.6.17 and is Debian based.

I have searched the internet for quite some time now trying different things to fix this problem to no avail. So, I'm putting it out to you all for assistance in getting over this little hump.

A walk through:

Plug in the rt73. Output from /var/log/messages.

Nov 1 20:37:05 Acer5040 kernel: [ 104.448248] usb 3-1: new high speed USB device using ehci_hcd and address 3 Nov 1 20:37:06 Acer5040 kernel: [ 104.568800] usb 3-1: configuration #1 chosen from 1 choice Nov 1 20:37:06 Acer5040 kernel: [ 104.703490] Loading module: rt73usb - CVS (N/A) by http://rt2x00.s erialmonkey.com. Nov 1 20:37:06 Acer5040 kernel: [ 104.805723] usbcore: registered new driver rt73usb

All seems good. Now I run kdesu wlassistant from konsole to monitor stdout.

kbuildsycoca running... Loaded application options. DHCP Client: dhclient All executables found. iwconfig_status: /sbin/iwconfig ==>stderr: lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

sit0 no wireless extensions.

Wireless interface(s): wmaster0, wlan0 Permissions checked. ifconfig_status: /sbin/ifconfig wlan0 ifup: /sbin/ifconfig wlan0 up scan: /sbin/iwlist wlan0 scan Networks found: 2 Checking for active connection. Trying to get gateway address... ...from /var/lib/dhcp3/dhclient.leases Gateway address: 192.168.0.1

All seems good as I now have 2 wireless networks found with 5-star quality, one of which is mine!?! My wireless is a simple open 64-bit WEP on channel 7. After setting the settings (creating a profile) for my network, and clicking connect this is the output:

ACTION: CONNECT. kill_dhcp: /sbin/dhclient -r wlan0 ==>stderr: There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.pid with pid 5171 killed old client process, removed PID file Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.4 Copyright 2004-2006 Internet Systems Consortium. All rights reserved. For info, please vi sit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801 wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801 Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:14:78:79:22:f0 Sending on LPF/wlan0/00:14:78:79:22:f0 Sending on Socket/fallback DHCPRELEASE on wlan0 to 192.168.0.1 port 67 ifup: /sbin/ifconfig wlan0 up iwconfig_set: /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 mode managed channel 2.442 G key open XXXXXXXXXX essid Unes ==>stderr: Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) : SET failed on device wlan0 ; Device or resource busy. iwconfig_ap: /sbin/iwconfig wlan0 ap 00:13:46:16:9C:2C ifconfig_dhcp: /sbin/dhclient -q wlan0 ==>stderr: There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.pid with pid 5798864 kill_dhcp: /sbin/dhclient -r wlan0 ==>stderr: There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.pid with pid 5798864 Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client V3.0.4 Copyright 2004-2006 Internet Systems Consortium. All rights reserved. For info, please visit http://www.isc.org/sw/dhcp/

wmaster0 : unknown hardware address type 801 wmaster0: unknown hardware address type 801 Listening on LPF/wlan0/00:14:78:79:22:f0 Sending on LPF/wlan0/00:14:78:79:22:f0 Sending on Socket/fallback DHCPRELEASE on wlan0 to 192.168.0.1 port 67 CONNECTION FAILED. Checking for active connection. Trying to get gateway address... ...from /var/lib/dhcp3/dhclient.leases Gateway address: 192.168.0.1

Everything seems good until dhclient -q wlan0. Watching the light activity on the adapter, I feel that the rt73 is sending logon data and passing but then hangs when running dhclient and trying to aquire an IP. And then this line:

==>stderr: There is already a pid file /var/run/dhclient.pid with pid 5798864

What's wrong with dhclient? I would rule out driver but it scans fine, seems to try and talk with the router. I would rule out dhclient but seems to work fine with eth0 both auto and from the command line. Also, noone else seems to have this problem - lol. I've Googled so many "buzz phrases" trying to solve this problem and the results are very few.

What are your thoughts?