At my wit's end: Realtek 8187B, 11.1

I’ve looked at the stickies, and helpful as they were, I just don’t get around this…
Now, I’m not quite a noob, but I haven’t had any experience with wireless in Linux until now. At least I know what the terminal is. (And I must say it’s quite the task finding it in the Gnome-menu in 11.1…) My equipment is a Toshiba Sat. Pro L300-1CZ (with added RAM, phew) and a Realtek 8187B. I know this because that’s what preinstalled Vista and the associated drivers from Toshiba’s repository says. :stuck_out_tongue: lsusb lists it as 0bda:8198, however.
Formatting slightly altered from actual screen output, but you get the idea.

Onto the array of command-output:

YaST Hardware information:
(Of interest? I found a network interface using the driver rtl8187, name wlan0.)
Network card is reported as RTL8187B_WLAN_Adapter (wlan0), bus- and driver-entries look ok to me. (Driver used: rtl8187, active and modprobed.) Device-name wlan0 is listed on at least two different places - is that good?
Kernel-driver: rtl8187 (well, SHOCKER!)
I don’t know what the Resources-tab has to add to the discussion, so I’ll leave it alone. It looks like only a summary of what the device supports, and not what I’m trying to actually use.

Wireless LAN: Yes

There is another tree-entry for Wireless LAN (the one I just quoted was from Network hardware or whatever it’s called), but it doesn’t appear to report anything that hasn’t been listed already.

sudo /usr/sbin/iwlist scan:
wlan 0 Scan completed:
Cell 01 - Address: 00:11:F5:5B:DB:A9
ESSID:“Graskallakastali”
Mode:Master
Channel:1
Frequency:2.412 GHz (Channel 1)
Quality=26/100 Signal level:-58 dBm
Encryption key:on
Bit Rates:<lots of them, really…>
Extra:tsf=0000012a90387189
Extra: Last beacon: 1812ms ago
Cell 02 - A different network I don’t have access to (or shouldn’t, anyway - they don’t have an encryption)

NetworkManager: Mode is Infrastructure, BSSID and MAC-address fields are left empty. Wireless security set to WEP 40/128-bit key, key entered, Set as Available to all users. (Which is only me.) Settings for IPv4 are set to Automatic method (DHCP), Router and client ID left untouched.
Reports connection established.

sudo /usr/sbin/iwconfig:

wlan0:
IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:"Graskallakastali"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: 00:11:F5:5B:DB:A9
Bit Rate=54 Mb/s Tx-Power=27 dBm
Retry min limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr=2352 B
Encryption key: <Looks exactly as I entered it! Imagine that!> Security mode:open
Power Management:off
Link Quality=24/100 Signal level:-59 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

/sbin/ifconfig:

wlan0:
Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:21:63:93:F0:D8
inet addr:192.168.1.72 Bcast:192.168.1.255 Mask:255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::221:63ff:fe93:f0d8/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:1142 <0 errors, drops, overruns or frames>
TX packets:346 <0 errors, drops, overruns, carriers or collisions> txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:56396 TX bytes:46726

The only other interface reporting an ‘inet addr’ is the loopback. Note that the computer (laptop) I’m writing this from has an IP-address ending with 1.69.

ping -c 5 192.168.1.1:
Reports destination host unreachable. Pinging .72 (myself) works like it should. Pinging the laptop at .69 is another unreachable host.

IPv6 is most likely enabled at this point. So, what should I do from here?

Try the “compat-wireless” drivers matching your kernel version, kernel type and architecture.


uname -r # gives you the kernel type and kernel version


cat /etc/SuSE-release # gives you architecture (i586 or x86_64)

Index of /repositories/driver:/wireless

Search for "compat-wireless-kmp-“kernel type”-some date-kernel version-release-number-“architecture”.rpm in openSUSE 11.1 or 11.1-update.

Install and reload module as root (modprobe -r rtl8187 && modprobe rtl8187).

Heh, that’s right, I missed that bit of information!
uname -r: 2.6.27.7-9-default
cat /etc/SuSE-release: openSUSE 11.1 (x86_64)

Downloading compat-wireless-kmp-default-20090330_2.6.27.7_9.1-1.1.x86_64.rpm, zypper-installing it gives: Package is already installed. Blergh…!

Nevertheless, I did the modprobing-stuff (though it was a bit of an IQ-test: modprobe has to be invoked with the full path, i.e. /sbin/modprobe :P), and all of a sudden it works! Yay!

Bah, and I went to all that trouble of typing ALL THAT, and the solution was this quick… :beat-up:

But, yeah, many thanks!

That’s good that you provided the info,gives us more to work with, unlike some i could mention.Well done for persevering & well done again to Akoellh for helping solve the problem

Andy

There’s one thing to take care about now.

If you are running an online update (which you should do as soon as possible) you will get a new kernel (2.6.27.21 atm).

The package installed is not compatible with this new kernel, you need the compat-wireless-kmp-default package from the 11.1-update repository.

New package downloaded, update running… and running… and running… Just under an hour left as of this writing. Oh well, that can only mean it’s working just fine.

BTW:

Aknowledging me for “good work” is one thing and I’m grateful for that, but there are the guys/gals who do the real work; the developers/maintainers of those drivers, I’m only packaging up what THEY provide.

In this special case one of them is also active member of this community, so type


/sbin/modinfo rtl8187|grep author

have a look at the output and say “Thank you, Larry” and of course "Thank you " to all the other developers.

Hey, look at that, they’re even half a dozen!
Thanks, Larry-and-the-gang, for the working drivers.

Fixed my issue

Thank you Akoellh!

My question is posted here

Wireless configured fine - no internet connection via DHCP - openSUSE Forums