Need help installing driver

I just dual booted Open SUSE on my computer, and am pretty happy with it. But, in order to use my wireless card for it, I need to install a driver, and I have no idea how. The wireless card is a Realtek 8191 SE. I’ve downloaded a driver, but I have no idea how to configure it. I’ve tried pasting the files into /lib/firmware, but it won’t allow me to edit or paste any files into the folder. Can somebody please explain how to set up a driver? Thank you.

On 12/01/2010 11:36 AM, Rusell wrote:
>
> I just dual booted Open SUSE on my computer, and am pretty happy with
> it. But, in order to use my wireless card for it, I need to install a
> driver, and I have no idea how. The wireless card is a Realtek 8191 SE.
> I’ve downloaded a driver, but I have no idea how to configure it. I’ve
> tried pasting the files into /lib/firmware, but it won’t allow me to
> edit or paste any files into the folder. Can somebody please explain
> how to set up a driver? Thank you.

Please post the output of ‘/sbin/lspci -n’. That will tell me exactly what card
you have.

Unlike Windows, a Linux driver must be compiled against exactly the kernel that
it will be run. What you downloaded was kernel source, not a binary. If it will
be necessary for you to build the driver, we can cover that later.

FYI: Linux has directories. That OS (sic) from Redmond has folders, but then
they don’t understand file systems, either.

00:00.0 0600: 8086:0044 (rev 02)
00:02.0 0300: 8086:0046 (rev 02)
00:16.0 0780: 8086:3b64 (rev 06)
00:1a.0 0c03: 8086:3b3c (rev 05)
00:1b.0 0403: 8086:3b56 (rev 05)
00:1c.0 0604: 8086:3b42 (rev 05)
00:1c.4 0604: 8086:3b4a (rev 05)
00:1c.5 0604: 8086:3b4c (rev 05)
00:1d.0 0c03: 8086:3b34 (rev 05)
00:1e.0 0604: 8086:2448 (rev a5)
00:1f.0 0601: 8086:3b09 (rev 05)
00:1f.2 0106: 8086:3b29 (rev 05)
00:1f.3 0c05: 8086:3b30 (rev 05)
00:1f.6 1180: 8086:3b32 (rev 05)
02:00.0 0280: 10ec:8172 (rev 10)
03:00.0 0200: 1969:2060 (rev c1)
ff:00.0 0600: 8086:2c62 (rev 02)
ff:00.1 0600: 8086:2d01 (rev 02)
ff:02.0 0600: 8086:2d10 (rev 02)
ff:02.1 0600: 8086:2d11 (rev 02)
ff:02.2 0600: 8086:2d12 (rev 02)
ff:02.3 0600: 8086:2d13 (rev 02)

Like that?

On 12/01/2010 03:36 PM, Rusell wrote:

> 02:00.0 0280: 10ec:8172 (rev 10)
>
> Like that?

Yes. I dropped an n off the command I gave you, but the one above is your
Realtek wireless device. The driver for that is currently under development
and might be in kernel 2.6.38, which would likely mean openSUSE 12.0, or 11.5,
whichever comes after 11.4.

There is a driver on the Realtek web site, but it is not nearly as good as the
new one I got privately. At the moment, I cannot send you the driver, but if you
send me your Email address in a private message, whether you use 32- or 64-bit
system, and the output of ‘uname -r’, I will build you a driver and Email it to
you. It will break whenever the kernel is changed, but by then I should be able
to distribute the source code.