Has anyone tried to get RealTek wireless drivers (e.g. RealTek rtl8192SE) to work in 11.4RC1, by any chance? If so, what was the result?
I have been testing RC1-64 live cd for a few days and cannot find the rtl8192se driver. I have need it since buying a Toshiba in Dec2009 and have always used a download from Realtek. The 1st 64 bit versions were a bit buggy but 32 bit seemed to work fine. The 64 bit versions have also worked with no issues since early last year.
A version of the driver has always been in the Staging folder, but is not there on my live cd. As wireless does not work with the live cd, I have been assuming I would again download the driver and compile after installing 11.4.
Now wondering what prompted your question and if perhaps you know why the driver is no longer in Staging and yet not implemented?
On 02/23/2011 09:36 AM, zuser wrote:
>
> I have been testing RC1-64 live cd for a few days and cannot find the
> rtl8192se driver. I have need it since buying a Toshiba in Dec2009 and
> have always used a download from Realtek. The 1st 64 bit versions were a
> bit buggy but 32 bit seemed to work fine. The 64 bit versions have also
> worked with no issues since early last year.
>
> A version of the driver has always been in the Staging folder, but is
> not there on my live cd. As wireless does not work with the live cd, I
> have been assuming I would again download the driver and compile after
> installing 11.4.
>
> Now wondering what prompted your question and if perhaps you know why
> the driver is no longer in Staging and yet not implemented?
The vendor driver is still in staging. I would guess that it is not on the Live
CDs to reduce the size.
What are the PCI IDs for the device in question? Use ‘/sbin/lspci -nnk’ to find
out. Realtek has sent me a mac80211-based driver for the RTL8192SE that should
be merged into the kernel by 2.6.40. As 2.6.38 will be released in about 2
weeks, it will not be possible to make 2.6.39.
Info requested:
03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8191SEvB Wireless LAN Controller [10ec:8172] (rev 10)
Subsystem: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device [10ec:8151]
Kernel driver in use: rtl819xSE
I am currently using the “rtl8192se_linux_2.6.0017.0705.2010.tar.gz” version downloaded last Oct.
On 02/23/2011 12:36 PM, zuser wrote:
>
> lwfinger;2294267 Wrote:
>> On 02/23/2011 09:36 AM, zuser wrote:
>>> What are the PCI IDs for the device in question? Use ‘/sbin/lspci
>> -nnk’ to find
>> out. Realtek has sent me a mac80211-based driver for the RTL8192SE that
>> should
>> be merged into the kernel by 2.6.40. As 2.6.38 will be released in
>> about 2
>> weeks, it will not be possible to make 2.6.39.
>
> Info requested:
> 03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
> RTL8191SEvB Wireless LAN Controller [10ec:8172] (rev 10)
> Subsystem: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device [10ec:8151]
> Kernel driver in use: rtl819xSE
>
>
> I am currently using the “rtl8192se_linux_2.6.0017.0705.2010.tar.gz”
> version downloaded last Oct.
That device is powered by the driver that I have. As I said before, it will
likely be in kernel 2.6.40 - that will probably be in the next openSUSE release
after 11.4.
If you are willing to run a test kernel, that driver should be in the
wireless-testing git tree within a month or so. I still have some cleanup to do
on it; however, it is working here.
A possibly stupid question, but I’ll dare ask it anyway: I currently run a similar driver downloaded from the Realtek website on my 11.3 system (I have rtl8192se_linux_2.6.0017.0507.2010) and it works fine. Can I reinstall that driver (or a later version of it) when 11.4 comes out (with the kernel 11.4 ships with), or is that likely to fail? If so, I would prefer that over having to run an experimental kernel.
On 02/23/2011 09:06 PM, twelveeighty wrote:
>
> A possibly stupid question, but I’ll dare ask it anyway: I currently
> run a similar driver downloaded from the Realtek website on my 11.3
> system (I have rtl8192se_linux_2.6.0017.0507.2010) and it works fine.
> Can I reinstall that driver (or a later version of it) when 11.4 comes
> out (with the kernel 11.4 ships with), or is that likely to fail? If so,
> I would prefer that over having to run an experimental kernel.
With the kernel headers or source, you should be able to build the driver. The
only question is whether the kernel API has changed, which will require
modifying the Realtek source. The experimental kernel will include an rtl8192se
driver that has been run harder than the one you get from the website, which
more than makes up for the experimental kernel. Your system - your decision.
I just did the 11.4 upgrade, not a full install as I was running 11.3 and it wiped out the wireless driver again.
The Realtek wireless driver has been an issue in almost every release of OpenSuse for the last 2 years. 11.2, 11.3, both I had to scramble around and find an Ethernet cable and download the driver from realtek. Other distributions its there and comes up working.
My Toshiba is a T135-S1309 and it will run the 64 bit version. I think i have the driver on the computer and will once again compile it and install it as that’s the only way I ever got it to work when upgrading…
Been a SuSE user since the days of release 6 something before that Red Hat and Slackware and my first was Yggdrasil Linux. Though I am more of a person who never gets into the bowels of the OS. You could classify me as a un power computer user as I know little more than to download a driver, though the compiling days came from running JNOS TCP/IP on DOS systems compiling it for amateur radio packet TCP/IP service with Borland 3.1 C / C++
I can’t complain to much as for the cost of the OS its little trouble to compile. But if I was replacing Windows with Linux, I would probably decide not to do so. So many distributions are more for computer geeks than main stream users, but they should be if the goal is to make a Microsoft replacement. A normal user would have no clue what to do in this case as most Windows users never get to doing something other than downloading a driver much less compiling it.
On 03/17/2011 10:36 AM, gfiber wrote:
>
> I just did the 11.4 upgrade, not a full install as I was running 11.3
> and it wiped out the wireless driver again.
>
> The Realtek wireless driver has been an issue in almost every release
> of OpenSuse for the last 2 years. 11.2, 11.3, both I had to scramble
> around and find an Ethernet cable and download the driver from realtek.
> Other distributions its there and comes up working.
>
> My Toshiba is a T135-S1309 and it will run the 64 bit version. I think
> i have the driver on the computer and will once again compile it and
> install it as that’s the only way I ever got it to work when upgrading…
>
> Been a SuSE user since the days of release 6 something before that Red
> Hat and Slackware and my first was Yggdrasil Linux. Though I am more of
> a person who never gets into the bowels of the OS. You could classify me
> as a un power computer user as I know little more than to download a
> driver, though the compiling days came from running JNOS TCP/IP on DOS
> systems compiling it for amateur radio packet TCP/IP service with
> Borland 3.1 C / C++
>
>
> I can’t complain to much as for the cost of the OS its little trouble
> to compile. But if I was replacing Windows with Linux, I would probably
> decide not to do so. So many distributions are more for computer geeks
> than main stream users, but they should be if the goal is to make a
> Microsoft replacement. A normal user would have no clue what to do in
> this case as most Windows users never get to doing something other than
> downloading a driver much less compiling it.
To clarify the situation a little. Drivers for the RTL8192SE occur in only two
places - at Realtek and on my computer. Some distros apparently take the vendor
driver and package it with their systems. OpenSUSE does not. For some devices,
the Packman repo will make it available. I have no idea if this one is there or
not for these devices.
The driver on my computer is the result of a collaboration between me and
Realtek. They develop the drivers and I finish making them suitable for
inclusion in the mainline kernel. Most vendor drivers are not ready for that
step. Linus has very high standards and does not allow crap code in. The driver
for the RTL8192SE/RTL8191SE is in the finishing stages of clean-up and will be
transmitted for review within the next 2 weeks. As the merge window for kernel
2.6.39 is essentially closed, the earliest this driver will be in the kernel is
2.6.40. As such, it will probably be a standard feature of openSUSE 11.5.
Yes, this process is slow; however, Linux users would never put up with crashes
or reboots the way Windows users have to.
@lwfinger: thanks for your hard work on this driver. I know first-hand the RTL code is sub-par since I run their driver on my 11.4 machine (previously 11.3) and it’s not optimal: the driver eats CPU cycles that I don’t think should be there and it drops connections once in a while. On 11.3, it would lock up my laptop altogether once in a while. Hasn’t happened on 11.4 yet.
Specifically to the CPU usage: do you see any of this on your kernel driver for the RTL8192SE/RTL8191SE?
I also notice that the driver is very chatty in /var/log/messages, will that be the case in the kernel driver as well?
On 03/17/2011 04:36 PM, twelveeighty wrote:
> @lwfinger: thanks for your hard work on this driver. I know first-hand
> the RTL code is sub-par since I run their driver on my 11.4 machine
> (previously 11.3) and it’s not optimal: the driver eats CPU cycles that
> I don’t think should be there and it drops connections once in a while.
> On 11.3, it would lock up my laptop altogether once in a while. Hasn’t
> happened on 11.4 yet.
>
> Specifically to the CPU usage: do you see any of this on your kernel
> driver for the RTL8192SE/RTL8191SE?
>
> I also notice that the driver is very chatty in /var/log/messages, will
> that be the case in the kernel driver as well?
No, this is a completely new version. It logs only minimum info. I’ll have to
see about the CPU usage.