Realtek wireless problems

First of all, hi everyone. I’m pretty new to the Linux world, and I’ve only been experimenting for a weeks now. Originally I had Ubuntu, but in the quest to find the right distro for me, I decided to give OpenSuse a shot. However, I am having issues with suse not picking up wireless networks. I tried to follow the guide found here My wireless doesn’t work - a primer on what I should do next

I did the best I could as far as supplying information, but if you need additional info, just feel free to ask. I want this solved just as desperately as anyone, haha.

I know that I have a Realtek RTL8188CE driver, its PCI.

When I check for my wireless networks it says that none are available, even wired connections. I used this command /usr/sbin/iwconfig

Also when I tried this command from the guide sudo /usr/sbin/iwlist scan it said that none of them were able to be scanned because they werent set up to be able to be scanned.

dmesg | less when I put this command into the terminal, I scoured through about 800 some lines before I finally gave up. I didn’t see anything about my WLAN, but I suppose that I could have missed it.

I know this isn’t a lot of information but I’m not sure what else I can provide.

I have a bash script that can help dig up info from your system if you are game to try it. See message #11 for more details:

netinfo - Read Network & PC Information into a Local Text File - Page 2

This creates lots of text. You can only post portions here due to its size, which you select from the file (which is very much OK to do) or you could post it all into SuSE Paste you can find here:

SUSE Paste

Don’t forget to set the file type and expiration date.

Thank You,

On 07/19/2011 07:46 PM, ethanftw wrote:
>
> First of all, hi everyone. I’m pretty new to the Linux world, and I’ve
> only been experimenting for a weeks now. Originally I had Ubuntu, but in
> the quest to find the right distro for me, I decided to give OpenSuse a
> shot. However, I am having issues with suse not picking up wireless
> networks. I tried to follow the guide found here ‘My wireless doesn’t
> work - a primer on what I should do next’ (http://tinyurl.com/47ukyyh)
>
> I did the best I could as far as supplying information, but if you need
> additional info, just feel free to ask. I want this solved just as
> desperately as anyone, haha.
>
>
> I know that I have a Realtek RTL8188CE driver, its PCI.
>
> When I check for my wireless networks it says that none are available,
> even wired connections. I used this command /usr/sbin/iwconfig
>
>
>
> Also when I tried this command from the guide sudo /usr/sbin/iwlist
> scan
it said that none of them were able to be scanned because they
> werent set up to be able to be scanned.
>
> dmesg | less when I put this command into the terminal, I scoured
> through about 800 some lines before I finally gave up. I didn’t see
> anything about my WLAN, but I suppose that I could have missed it.
>
> I know this isn’t a lot of information but I’m not sure what else I can
> provide.

Your kernel is likely too old for having the rtl8192ce driver built in. That
driver went into mainline with kernel 2.6.38.

You have a couple of options. One is to get the compat-wireless package for your
kernel. First add the repository at
http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/driver:/wireless/openSUSE_11.4/. Next
find out which kernel you are running with the ‘uname -r’ command. Next add the
compat-wireless-kmp-xxxx that matches the above. Note - xxxx will be desktop or
default. Finally add the kernel-firmware package. After all that, do a ‘sudo
/sbin/modprobe -v rtl8192ce’ and the wifi device shoud be available.

Your second option is to install a newer kernel. This option is not as good as
#1 for someone without much experience.

Ok, this may be a stupid question. But regarding the first link you posted and said to get the repo, is there a specific thing in there that I am suppose to download or what? Thanks.

Also, just as a note, I did the ‘uname -r’ command as mentioned above and I’m running kernel 2.6.37.1-1.2

However, with no internet connection in OpenSuse, I’m unsure about how to get the repository and all that stuff, and I’m not really sure exactly what to download. I think it has been established that I need to update my kernel, I’m just not sure how.

To add a repository you go to YaST / Software / Software Repositories then select add/URL. Enter the following address, but exclude the two quotes at the end.

"http://download.opensuse.org/repositories/driver:/wireless/openSUSE_11.4/"

Next, open up YaST / Software / Software Management and search on compat-wireless-kmp and install the one where the last number matches your kernel version, like 2.6.37 perhaps. The terminal command:

uname -r

Would tell you the exact one you have installed. To learn more about updating your kernel, a script file does exist to do this for you. Please read the following blog for more info:

S.A.K.C. - SUSE Automated Kernel Compiler - Version 2.50 - Blogs - openSUSE Forums

The adding in of repositories and searching for files is a basic function, one you should understand before also doing a kernel upgrade, but the info is there for you to read through and good luck.

Thank You,