D-Link DWL-G510 WI-FI non-functional on an HP machine

English Network/Internet
1

I’ve looked heavily through both linuxquestions.org and forums.opensuse.org; so far, -no luck!! -So I have registered, and am writing my first thread, -hoping for some good help…

  1. Intro:
    -I just inherited a very cool Linux HP box from a friend. It hasn’t been on since 2012,and was dead when I got it. I redid all of the hardware connections, then replaced the CMOS battery (it came alive), and with a bit of fear, redid the clock, etc. in the BIOS (F9 I think). -It’s up and running! It’s been a while since I’ve been able to use Unix, and that was RedHat for work, so I’m very stoked! My friend had loaded on some impressive scientific software to play with, which I do want to start working with, as soon as I can get things working properly…
    -It is running SUSE 11.4, has decent RAM, an OK sized hard drive, has a logitec keyboard; functionally, the “terminal”, interactive GUIs are good, including additions FIREFOX and something called YAST2, and likely connecting by cable via ethernet might connect it to the internet, but the wifi router is wayyy too far to be able to wire up to.
  • –>And… inside the cable bundle bag was a PCI D-Link DWL-G510 card
    (the original owner bought it and now remembers he couldn’t get it working, back then).

-Aside: Because of all the “extra” software packages on this device, I really can’t do any upgrading of the OS (11.4) !! -Especially as an IT Linux tyro who can’t connect it to the internet!!!
*
Info 1:
cat /etc/S
openSUSE
VERSION = 11.4
cat: /etc/SuSEconfig: Is a directory
openSUSE 11.4 (x86_64)
VERSION = 11.4
CODENAME = Celadon

uname -r
2.6.37.1-1.2-desktop

  1. So, anyway:
    I plugged the Dlink card into a slot, turned the computer back on, and… -nothing, really… (although the card’s LED lights up green in the back). -No plugNplay…
    -I need help!!!
    –Did a massive amount of googling, found out about YAST, and then began rooting around the Hardware INFO, and it shows the dlink under PCI:
    31: PCI 509.0: 0280 Network controller
    [Created at pci.318]
    Unique ID: vc7q.Iq3QtAmECT5
    Parent ID: 6NW+.N8JFdhnGYg3
    SysFS ID: /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1e.0/0000:05:09.0
    SysFS BusID: 0000:05:09.0
    Hardware Class: network
    Model: “D-Link AirPlus G DWL-G510 Wireless PCI Adapter(rev.B)”
    Vendor: pci 0x168c “Atheros Communications Inc.”
    Device: pci 0x001a “AR2413 802.11bg NIC”
    SubVendor: pci 0x1186 “D-Link System Inc”
    SubDevice: pci 0x3a16 “D-Link AirPlus G DWL-G510 Wireless PCI Adapter(rev.B)”
    Revision: 0x01
    Memory Range: 0xe0800000-0xe080ffff (rw,non-prefetchable)
    IRQ: 18 (no events)
    Module Alias: “pci:v0000168Cd0000001Asv00001186sd00003A16bc02sc80i00”
    Driver Info #0:
    Driver Status: ath5k is active
    Driver Activation Cmd: “modprobe ath5k”
    Config Status: cfg=no, avail=yes, need=no, active=unknown
    Attached to: #25 (PCI bridge)

-weirdly, on the other hand, from googling, I see on a SUSE forum that the DWLG510 expects:
D-Link DWL-G510 rev C(2) PCI Ralink RT2501
?? should it be “ralink-firmware”, -not ath5k driver, perhaps??? (can’t find either ath5k nor any “ral…” anywhere in my “RPM” info, btw?)

Although the card is showing up under the Hardware Settings under YAST, -the Network Settings doesn’t show it,

  • I ONLY see the Ethernet card from NetXtremes, which says: Device Name eth0, started manually, IP address…DHCP.
    -The Dlink device isn’t listed there…
  1. More googling and, some more info for here (always running commands as a SU, btw):

hwinfo --wlan gives me nothing at all!

lspci -vnn gives:
05:09.0 Network controller [0280]: Atheros Communications Inc. AR2413 802.11bg NIC [168c:001a] (rev 01)
Subsystem: D-Link System Inc AirPlus G DWL-G510 Wireless PCI Adapter(rev.B) [1186:3a16]
Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 18
Memory at e0800000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64]
Memory at <ignored> (32-bit, non-prefetchable)
Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2

→ So, it seems to me that my wlan hardware isn’t really registering as wlan, right??? -I guess this is what happened to my friend in 2011, but I do hope to fix the problem!

-I am flummoxed here!! Besides being an IT tyro, I am also rusty a bit on UNIX, and am a complete newbie on SUSE. -And, of course, all hardware and software really predate 2012...


*Can anyone help me see where I've gone wrong on this PCI Dlink card? I really do need internet to go forward w this very cool old workstation!! The card needs to start talking (to a WPA-secured router), but it's just not there. -Have no clue as to what to do!*

Thanks!!!

-Hoping for some help!![/size]

2

In short: DO NOT use 11.4 anymore, it’s been dead for years …

  1. Download a recent openSUSE Leap live image for 15.1 and boot from it
  2. My bet is that everything will work OOTB.

If so, install 15.1 on the machine.

Oh, and I see this is your first post here, welcome !!!

3

Wow, thanks for the quick response!
-Well, unfortunately, I wouldn’t now how to make a bootable disk, etc. , although I’m sure there must be some help somewhere online here…
The reason I was happy to take this machine was all the software packages that the previous owner was able to load on. -They did require quite a bit of fiddling, registering, etc. to get them going, as I recall.
If I lose those, then I just have a nice unix box.
–>Any chance, therefore of some archeological help to get this 11.4 wi-fi running?? -Seems to be the only thing missing!
Thanks again!

4

First, a distro that old with an internet connection for me woudl be an absolute no go. What programs are we talking about?
Second, I don’t expect much help here, since 11.4 is indeed archeological in terms of linux.
Third, if you need additional things on the system, that’s going to be a mess, since most of the repositories are gone.

5

Your system (openSUSE 11.4) would be very difficult for an inexperienced administrator to upgrade or add hardware to. A new installation is highly recommended. Also most of the user software would be unsafe to connect to the Internet,

Why not list here the installed software that you find useful? Much (if not all) will have updated versions that will either install as default or be available in the openSUSE repositories. If there is something exotic that you depend on, then it would be best to keep the system in its current state until you work out a replacement – hopefully before the hardware fails.

The suggestion to try booting from a live USB (or even a CD) to test your machine is very sensible. Just using a more recent kernel may make your wireless card functional. BTW manufacturers often use different chipsets in network cards with the same model name, it is necessary to either visual examine the chips or see how they are reported to the system software.

6

Thanks for the replies!

Hi
*-Managed finally to get that 2009 wifi card working in the 2008 machine w the 2011 linux. -Actually remounted the card in a different PCI slot (that is too near the video card to my mind), but still took days of driver selection, hacking and guessing about everything from proxies to whatever and finally getting KNetworkManager onto my desktop for a double-click after booting to get it to connect… Interesting experience.
FYI (for anybody else out there), YAST (yup learned a lot in a few days) told me I needed “iw” to continue configuring my wlan, and some old threads eventually and indirectly pointed me to:
Index of /pub/opensuse/discontinued/distribution/11.4/repo/oss/suse/x86_64/
-anybody needing some bits of software on their own ancient machines can just type in their running version (like 10.2 to 13.2 to leap… –> just overwrite that 11.4 and go! -For me, firstly, though, had to first figure out what rpm was all about, but … :wink:

-The software that I didn’t want to lose are about 50GBs of 2 “related” scientific analysis packages with literally 1000s of individual interlinked programs that often require MPI…lots of test data… blah blah blah. Back in 2011, these were loaded on for my friend by a helpful IT guru at the company I used to work at – for training purposes (they are uni freeware “competition” to what that company and about 40 others in the world have). -So, yup, trying to keep them alive. The machine is one that was discarded in 2011 from that office, -pretty powerful for those times ;-).*

-Now that it is actually up and running, it’s interesting to see how locked in the rest of the “non-OS” software is to the linux version! Firefox doesn’t seem upgrade-able (and this one has TLS1, SSL3 and no about:config hacking for that) - and even the website “en.opensuse.org” is locked from it!!! -So, it seems I couldn’t upgrade it from any download using its own (now functional) internet… (weirdly, Facebook works, but outlook.com webmail won’t work, etc., etc.). Seems most likely that I’d have to use a windows machine to grab any software ???

-Anyway, because of all this (since what’s on there is probably only functional on 11.4), it seems more important than ever to try to keep that scientific package alive (and therefore the senile 11.4 ) for now!

  1. If anybody has suggested packages of the perfect free total backup software that would allow me to perhaps write to a disk, etc., please let me know of your recommendations!! – Remember it must run on 11.4 for it to work. -And would be used to do a full restore if something horrible happened in an upgrade trial…
  2. If anybody can point me a way to see all of the links and libraries used by an individual software package on linux, -again please let me know!!! -Maybe I could back up selected stuff as necessary???
  3. Does anyone know if I’d have a chance in heck to get an updated, “functional” firefox to work via the last method in this thread??:
    https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/396890/how-do-i-update-firefox-to-the-newest-version?rq=1- looked at least possibly hopeful…
  4. Is there a tutorial somewhere to show me how to, say, create a bootable disk/usb that at least has a “proper” browser, -and how to use it such that I don’t lose the hard drive’s OS and software at the same time?

Hmmm, that’s it for now (am using an old windows machine for this correspondence – would be nice one day to use that “box” before it dies :wink:

Again, once I got things going, -was quite surprised to see how (at least) opensuse’s software is locked in and non-upgradeable; I guess one would have to upgrade the OS just to get a browser that, say, a bank would accept, -yes/no??? -Still very cool, and still very cool to get some of my old linux “skills” back :slight_smile:

Comments/help very much appreciated! -TMM, --the IT tyro

7

Well, -since I solved my original problem that I posted here, I will call this thread as closed, eh?
-If anyone has a similar problem, though, I think I can be of help, so let me know.
Cheers

8

You should investigate what it would take to see if your recovered data can run on a currently supported system, as long as you are relying on 11.4, everything is at risk.

BTW - congratulations on getting your network card to work, those were the days when many drivers had to be compiled on your own. Nowadays, those crivers are often pre-compiled and distribued through the kernel which means that what you just did is usually not necessary… If the system can recognize the hardware, then whatever it needs is automatically found, loaded and installed without any human input.

I would recommend on another machine running any OS (can be MSWindows) that you install a virtualization app like Virtualbox (or even enable Hyper-V which is part of all Windows but usually disabled by default). Or, if you have a Win10 machine, in the Microsoft Store you can install “Windows subsystem for Linux” and specifically choose openSUSE. With either of these two options, you will be able to run openSUSE on your existing MSWindows, think of this like running openSUSE Linux as a Windows app (only in concept).

If you have problems with the above, post any questions you have in the Virtualization Forum.

Once you have a current version of openSUSE running, you can then install whatever your scientific application is… You should first investigate if an updated version of your app exists, and how to install. If it’s a common app, you might find it at the following website which will return any app that is available from openSUSE

https://software.opensuse.org/search/

If you have problems locating your app, post any questions you have in the Applications forum…

As a new User to openSUSE, you might want to take a look through a presentation deck I created that describes useful info for New Users… pre-installation, installation and recommended first steps after installation

https://slides.com/tonysu/opensuse/#/

The followingis the page for downloading and installing LEAP, it has instructions on how to create your DVD or USB install source, and links to a Startup Guide that is similar to my slide deck.

https://software.opensuse.org/distributions/leap

As always, if you have any questions, just post in an appropriate Forum.

HTH,
TSU

9

Thanks for the detailed info!

-For the software and data files already on my system, -they are packages from several universities, so they aren’t “apps” in any sense. It will be a hurdle to re-download and re-compile, and re-link, etc. to get them back (I wasn’t the one who did all of that the first time). -So, I’ll wait a bit.

-A question that I am still not sure on: could I safely “upgrade” the OS from the current 11.4 directly to the current 15.1, or will it really require a complete wipe and redo??
Thanks

10

You can’t reasonably expect to jump to a current openSUSE successfully, it’s too big a jump.
The correct procedure is to upgrade version by version and it’s a very long flow… IIRC
11.4 > 12.1 > 12.2 > 12.3 > 13.1 > 13.2 > LEAP 42.1 > 42.2 > 41.3 > 15.0 > 15.1
A person could try to skip 42.2, 42.3 and 15.0… The differences in the LEAP minor versions are not as great as the other versions.

I’d recommend first trying to a P2V (physical to virtual) migration first. If successful, getting clone copy of your 11.4 running as a Virtualbox virtual machine, then all your efforts can then be in virtual machines which are extremely easy to make backup copies (simply copying the virtual machine files) and resolve mistakes (just delete the virtual machine with mistakes and launch a copy of your saved virtual machine).

Extra bonus if you at least try to do a P2V…
If you’re successful, then you’ll have a really easy way to backup your existing machine and if anything should go wrong in the future, you can simply launch your virtual version. That’s a really easy way to regain access to the data instead of trying to fix whatever broke in your original machine.

Or,
See if you can obtain the sources for those apps, it might be easier to recompile with a little help.

TSU