This seems so simple, and I’ve read that it “just works out of the box,” but after three days of trying . . . nothing. I sure hope you can help!
The issue is a brand new Asus USB N-13 wireless adapter I want to use on an older Asus motherboard computer. I’ve installed openSUSE 11.4 on this computer . . . because I like it much better than the later version. Even a fresh install doesn’t recognize the Asus adapter. except as USB hardware.
When I do “lsusb” in terminal I get this line (among others):
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0b05:17ab ASUSTek Computer, Inc.
When I go to YAST and get “Hardware Information” the device is listed under “USB” as an 802.11n WLAN Adapter.
Confusion reigns on this adapter, as there seems to be several different chipsets that have been put in the same package. In this case, I believe from lots of research that the 0b05:17ab indicates a Realtek device requiring a RTL8192cu driver. I’ve downloaded this driver package from Realtek (RTL8188C_8192C_USB_linux_v3.4.3_4369.20120622) and attempted to compile it, but was not successful, which is not surprising since I don’t have a clue about these things. I ran “sh install.sh” in terminal . . . but got errors.
I’ve also installed compat-wireless-scripts and compat-wireless (latest versions) but still nothing.
I am totally out of ideas at this point. Can someone help?
On 07/08/2012 04:26 PM, BillyDoc wrote:
> Confusion reigns on this adapter, as there seems to be several
> different chipsets that have been put in the same package. In this
> case, I believe from lots of research that the 0b05:17ab indicates a
> Realtek device requiring a RTL8192cu driver. I’ve downloaded this driver
> package from Realtek (RTL8188C_8192C_USB_linux_v3.4.3_4369.20120622) and
> attempted to compile it, but was not successful, which is not surprising
> since I don’t have a clue about these things. I ran “-sh install.sh-”
> in terminal . . . but got errors.
>
> I’ve also installed compat-wireless-scripts and compat-wireless (latest
> versions) but still nothing.
The device does use driver rtl8192cu. Have you installed the kernel-firmware
package?
For a novice, I do not recommend that you try any of the drivers on the Realtek
web site. In my work as maintainer of the various Realtek drivers, I keep
abreast of the drivers on that site, and I always have to modify them to get
them to compile on my kernels.
Using compat-wireless will get you a later version of the driver; however, it
does not fix any problems with missing firmware.
Hi lwfinger, and thanks for responding. I have read a lot of your posts on other threads and appreciate your depth of knowledge greatly!
To answer your question, yes, I did install kernel-firmware, but I have no idea how to get the firmware (if it’s in there) applied.
I guess I was saved from a Realtek driver by my ignorance, because I couldn’t compile it. Unfortunately, I think missing firmware is the problem . . . is there a solution?
Bill
On 07/08/2012 05:56 PM, BillyDoc wrote:
>
> Hi lwfinger, and thanks for responding. I have read a lot of your posts
> on other threads and appreciate your depth of knowledge greatly!
>
> To answer your question, yes, I did install kernel-firmware, but I have
> no idea how to get the firmware (if it’s in there) applied.
>
> I guess I was saved from a Realtek driver by my ignorance, because I
> couldn’t compile it. Unfortunately, I think missing firmware is the
> problem . . . is there a solution?
If you really installed the kernel-firmware package, then the necessary firmware
will be there. You can check to see if there is a file named
/lib/firmware/rtlwifi/rtl8192cufw.bin. That is what you need.
Your device was added at about the time 3.1 was released, but it is possible
that it was after, and I’m not sure if it is included in 3.1.10.
If you run the command “dmesg | grep 8192”, you should see something like
rtl8192cu: Chip version 0x10
rtl8192cu: MAC address: 00:1f:1f:c8:8e:cb
rtl8192cu: Board Type 0
rtl8192cu: Loading firmware rtlwifi/rtl8192cufw.bin
usbcore: registered new interface driver rtl8192cu
rtl8192cu: MAC auto ON okay!
rtl8192cu: Tx queue select: 0x05
Good morning lwfinger,
The firmware file is exactly where you said it would be, so that’s progress. I had looked in there before, but didn’t burrow deep enough to find it.
But now it gets more interesting. When I grep for 8192 I get this:
jayne@linux-7z1j:~/Desktop> dmesg | grep 8192
0.000000] PERCPU: Embedded 27 pages/cpu @ffff880037200000 s78592 r8192 d23808 u1048576
0.000000] pcpu-alloc: s78592 r8192 d23808 u1048576 alloc=1*2097152
1.417942] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xdfefe000 port 0xdfefe100 irq 19
1.417946] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xdfefe000 port 0xdfefe180 irq 19
jayne@linux-7z1j:~/Desktop>
which I believe is all unrelated. So . . . how is the system instructed to load the firmware, etc.? Shouldn’t this happen during boot?
Bill
On 07/09/2012 08:06 AM, BillyDoc wrote:
>
> Good morning lwfinger,
>
> The firmware file is exactly where you said it would be, so that’s
> progress. I had looked in there before, but didn’t burrow deep enough
> to find it.
>
> But now it gets more interesting. When I grep for 8192 I get this:
>
>
> Code:
> --------------------
> jayne@linux-7z1j:~/Desktop> dmesg | grep 8192
> 0.000000] PERCPU: Embedded 27 pages/cpu @ffff880037200000 s78592 r8192 d23808 u1048576
> 0.000000] pcpu-alloc: s78592 r8192 d23808 u1048576 alloc=1*2097152
> 1.417942] ata1: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xdfefe000 port 0xdfefe100 irq 19
> 1.417946] ata2: SATA max UDMA/133 abar m8192@0xdfefe000 port 0xdfefe180 irq 19
> jayne@linux-7z1j:~/Desktop>
> --------------------
>
>
> which I believe is all unrelated. So . . . how is the system
> instructed to load the firmware, etc.? Shouldn’t this happen during
> boot?
Those are unrelated. when the USB bus is scanned at boot and regularly after
boot, any new IDs are compared with those registered by the various drivers.
when there is a match, the appropriate driver is loaded and started. the driver
always controls the loading of firmware. As I said in my previous message, the
ID for your device was added after 3.1 was released. In addition, driver
rtl8192cu was not added until kernel 2.6.39. It is not available in the kernel
you are using in 11.4, which I think is 2.6.37.
Have you really implemented compat-wireless for your kernel as indicated by
the command 'uname -r"? Please report the computer output for the command
sudo /sbin/modprobe -v rtl8192cu
Hi lwfinger, thanks for your continued help!
I believe I got compat-wireless from an opensuse repository for 11.4 . . . but I’ve been doing a lot of thrashing around since then so I can’t be sure. In any case, here are the answers to your two questions.
jayne@linux-7z1j:~/Desktop> uname -r
2.6.37.6-0.20-desktop
jayne@linux-7z1j:~/Desktop> sudo /sbin/modprobe -v rtl8192cu
root's password:
FATAL: Module rtl8192cu not found.
jayne@linux-7z1j:~/Desktop>
I’m going to look into the version of compat-wireless now (I didn’t realize it was distribution specific) and will be back shortly.
Bill
Hi lwfinger,
I just used the Software Manager to see which version of compat-wireless I had installed, and this is what was indicated:
compat-wireless-kmp-desktop 3.3_k2.6.37.1_1.2-7.1
compat-wireless-scripts 3.3-71
Could I have installed these in some way that they show up in the Software Manager but aren’t actually active?
Bill
On 07/09/2012 09:46 AM, BillyDoc wrote:
> I’m going to look into the version of compat-wireless now (I didn’t
> realize it was distribution specific) and will be back shortly.
As is true with all kernel modules, the compat-wireless version must match the
kernel version exactly.
At least we now know why the rtl8192cu driver is not loading.
At least we now know why the rtl8192cu driver is not loading.
lwfinger, you have made me a very, very happy man! I can’t thank you enough. I’m writing this over my WIRELESS connection!
I found this repository and added it to my list of repositories:
download.opensuse.org /repositories/driver:/wireless/11.4-update
removed the previous versions of compat-wireless and compat-wireless-scripts and installed:
compat-wireless-kmp-default 3.3_k2.6.37.6_0.20-7.2
compat-wireless-kmp-desktop 3.3_k2.6.37.6_0.20-7.2
compat-wireless-kmp-xen 3.3_k2.6.37.6_0.20-7.2
compat-wireless-scripts 3.3-7.2
which was probably massively redundant, but . . . what do I know?
After the install I rebooted . . . and suddenly there was a pretty blue light showing on my wireless adapter! The rest was easy.
Thank you so much for your help. I couldn’t have sorted this out without you.
Bill
Glad you got it working. Situations like this are the reason the compat-wireless
project was started.