After a two year hiatus to Linux, I try it again out again. And then I run into to driver issues...

I have an old Linksys WUSB54G v4 Wireless USB Adapter. In previous versions I had to use a combination of Ndiswrapper and Wicd to hope of getting it working. In 10.10, apparently there are built in drivers for it.

Unfortunately they don't work. Fails to connect to my WPA network, fails to connect to my open unencrypted network. Wicd fails at "Obtaining IP address" or when using static IPs fails at verifying connectivity to network.

Getting fed up I tried the ndiswrapper approach. Installed and configured, but still not working, even when blacklisting the rt2570 module. So for some debugging I added some lines to my /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf file

blacklist rt2570
blacklist prism54usb
blacklist rt2x00lib
blacklist rt2x00usb

Restart and find this:

lordquackstar@quackbeast:/etc/modprobe.d$ lsmod | grep rt2
rt2500usb              18049  0 
rt2x00usb               9779  1 rt2500usb
rt2x00lib              27275  2 rt2500usb,rt2x00usb
led_class               2633  1 rt2x00lib
mac80211              231541  2 rt2x00usb,rt2x00lib
cfg80211              144470  2 rt2x00lib,mac80211

Seems to be ignored... Tried this:

lordquackstar@quackbeast:/etc/modprobe.d$ sudo rmmod -f rt2x00usb
ERROR: Removing 'rt2x00usb': Resource temporarily unavailable
lordquackstar@quackbeast:/etc/modprobe.d$ sudo rmmod -f rt2x00lib
ERROR: Removing 'rt2x00lib': Resource temporarily unavailable

and couldn't connect. Restarted and was back to the same modules loading.

Maybe there's something in the log:

lordquackstar@quackbeast:/etc/modprobe.d$ tail -n100000 /var/log/syslog | grep rt2
Dec 13 19:01:15 quackbeast kernel: [   23.698056] Registered led device: rt2500usb-phy0::radio
Dec 13 19:01:15 quackbeast kernel: [   23.698140] Registered led device: rt2500usb-phy0::quality
Dec 13 19:01:15 quackbeast kernel: [   23.701680] usbcore: registered new interface driver rt2500usb
Dec 13 19:01:15 quackbeast NetworkManager[855]: <info> (wlan0): new 802.11 WiFi device (driver: 'rt2500usb' ifindex: 4)
Dec 13 19:17:47 quackbeast kernel: [   23.521759] Registered led device: rt2500usb-phy0::radio
Dec 13 19:17:47 quackbeast kernel: [   23.521824] Registered led device: rt2500usb-phy0::quality
Dec 13 19:17:47 quackbeast kernel: [   23.524740] usbcore: registered new interface driver rt2500usb
Dec 13 19:17:47 quackbeast NetworkManager[798]: <info> (wlan0): new 802.11 WiFi device (driver: 'rt2500usb' ifindex: 4)

Seems to be autoloading. So this means that even if I pull it out, remove the module, and get it working, it still won't work when its plugged in all the time.

More info:

lordquackstar@quackbeast:/etc/modprobe.d$ sudo lshw -C Network
  *SNIP*
  *-network
       description: Wireless interface
       physical id: 1
       bus info: usb@1:2
       logical name: wlan0
       serial: 00:12:17:9b:f3:1e
       capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rt2500usb driverversion=2.6.35-24-generic firmware=N/A link=no multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg

USB:

lordquackstar@quackbeast:/etc/modprobe.d$ lsusb | grep -i rt
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 13b1:000d Linksys WUSB54G v4 802.11g Adapter [Ralink RT2500USB]

Any suggestions on how to either fix the rt2x00usb driver or permanently block it from loading? Note that I already have ndiswrapper installed