alfmel / mt7601

Linux driver for MT7601U with patch for stability and performance on recent kernel versions

MT7601U Linux driver

Many cheap USB wifi dongles use the MT7601U chip.

Unfortunately, the driver is not part of the Linux kernel source tree (yet?). This repository contains:

• source code from DPO_MT7601U_LinuxSTA_3.0.0.4_20130913.tar.bz2 (md5sum 5f440dccc8bc952745a191994fc34699)
• file DPO_MT7601U_LinuxSTA_3.0.0.4_20130913-Linux-3.17.0-v2.patch has been applied

The patch improves stability and performance for kernels >= 3.x

Usage

First install kernel-devel for your Linux distro

git clone https://github.com/porjo/mt7601.git
cd mt7601/src
make
mkdir -p /etc/Wireless/RT2870STA/
cp RT2870STA.dat /etc/Wireless/RT2870STA/
insmod os/linux/mt7601Usta.ko

If the module has loaded OK, you should see mt7601Usta listed in the output of lsmod and a new network interface ra0 should be present in the output of ip link.

If all goes well, you can permanently install the driver with make install.

History

On 26 Aug, 2014 user @poma posted to the linux-wireless mailing list discussing the poor state of driver support for this chipset. Thread can be seen here:

http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-wireless/msg126115.html

An inital patch was released on 28 Aug, 2014 with the following comment:

A patch[1] is composed partly from the RT3573 source code patched by ashaffer, from Andreas work, some of the ideas are from the beagleboard community, and some of my. :)
Debug(trace) is turned off.

Device now works more or less OK but slow, max. 10 Mbit, although connectable is only within the "N" & "N/G" modes.
What is important is the system no longer crashes, and disconnection are rare.
Generally better than before.

Tested with kernels:
3.15.10-200.fc20.x86_64
3.16.1-301.fc21.x86_64
3.17.0-0.rc2.git0.1.fc22.x86_64

and with debug kernel:
3.17.0-0.rc2.git1.1.fc22.x86_64

A second patch was released on 31 Aug, 2014 with the following comment:

A new patch[1] mainly based on patches at 
https://github.com/ashaffer/rt3573sta
and several network throughput tests via the Iperf.
Tested with kernels:
- 3.15.10-200.fc20.x86_64
- 3.16.1-301.fc21.x86_64
- 3.17.0-0.rc2.git3.1.fc22.x86_64
- 3.16.1-301.fc21.i686
- 3.17.0-0.rc2.git3.1.fc22.i686

Credits

Source code: (c) Copyright 2002-2013, MediaTek Inc. (released under GPLv2)

Patch: @poma at linux-wireless mailing list