Asus PCE-N53 11n N600 PCI-E Adapter on 3.x kernel

Question

Problem

ASUS PCE-N53 wireless NIC doesn't work for latest versions of the linux kernel. How do I get it working on my system?

Answer 1

Installing Driver for Linux 3.x Kernel

ASUS provides Linux drivers from their website, but it mentions that the driver supports "Linux Kernel 2.6.x", so it won't work without a some modifications to the driver code.

Fortunately, an archlinux forum mentions similar problems and one user was able to create a patch for kernel 3.8.x that seems to work with kernel 3.11.x.

Here's how I got it working:

Prerequisites

Ubuntu:

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Arch:

sudo pacman -S base-devel linux-headers

Steps:

1. Download the driver from the ASUS website

The download can be found under "Support > Drivers & Tools".

2. Unzip the contents of the downloaded file

cd into the new directory

3. Patch

The arch forum mentions a 3.8 patch file that needs to be downloaded.

1. Download rt5592sta_fix_64bit_3.8.patch to the current directory.
2. tar -xvf {driver_source.tar.gz}
3. cd into the directory created in previous step
4. patch -p1 < ../rt5592sta_fix_64bit_3.8.patch

4. Compile

NOTE: You will need to use sudo for it to compile properly.

sudo make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe rt5592sta

5. Enjoy

If all is well, you should now have a working card.