rtl8192du driver will not install in 13.1 after kernel upgrade from 3.11 to 3.12

English Network/Internet
1

I have a Belkin USB wifi adapter, F9L1101v2, with a Realtek rtl8192du chipset. It worked correctly after installing the driver from https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8192du, master version. (Thanks, Larry Finger.)

This is on an IBM ThinkPad X41, for both openSUSE 13.1 (i586) KDE Linux 3.11.10-29-default, and openSUSE 13.2 (i586) KDE Linux 3.16.7-21-default.

In 13.1, the driver would reinstall OK after kernel updates within 3.11, up to the latest 3.11.10-34. Today the kernel updated to 3.12.53-40 and the rtl8192du driver installation fails with

howard@X41-int-oS131:~/Downloads/Belkin/rtl8192du-master> make
make ARCH=i386 CROSS_COMPILE= -C /lib/modules/3.12.53-40-default/build M=/home/howard/Downloads/Belkin/rtl8192du-master  modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-3.12.53-40-obj/i386/default'
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/linux-3.12.53-40-obj/i386/default'
  CC [M]  /home/howard/Downloads/Belkin/rtl8192du-master/core/rtw_cmd.o
In file included from /home/howard/Downloads/Belkin/rtl8192du-master/core/rtw_cmd.c:19:0:
/home/howard/Downloads/Belkin/rtl8192du-master/include/osdep_service.h:83:20: error: redefinition of ‘ether_addr_copy’
 static inline void ether_addr_copy(u8 *dst, const u8 *src)
                    ^
In file included from /home/howard/Downloads/Belkin/rtl8192du-master/include/osdep_service.h:50:0,
                 from /home/howard/Downloads/Belkin/rtl8192du-master/core/rtw_cmd.c:19:
/usr/src/linux-3.12.53-40/include/linux/etherdevice.h:209:20: note: previous definition of ‘ether_addr_copy’ was here
 static inline void ether_addr_copy(u8 *dst, const u8 *src)
                    ^
make[4]: *** [/home/howard/Downloads/Belkin/rtl8192du-master/core/rtw_cmd.o] Error 1
make[3]: *** [_module_/home/howard/Downloads/Belkin/rtl8192du-master] Error 2
make[2]: *** [sub-make] Error 2
make[1]: *** [all] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/src/linux-3.12.53-40-obj/i386/default'
make: *** [modules] Error 2
howard@X41-int-oS131:~/Downloads/Belkin/rtl8192du-master>

If I boot back to the 3.11.10-34 kernel, the driver is there and works. Any idea how to fix this in kernel 3.12?
Thanks,
Howard

2

This driver works with openSUSE kernels 3.11 and 3.15, but would not build with openSUSE 3.12. Larry Finger pointed out that this is because of openSUSE’s backporting features from newer kernels into older ones. He identified the fix as changing the statement in file include/osdep_service.h that says
#if (LINUX_VERSION_CODE < KERNEL_VERSION(3,14,0))
from “3,14,0” to “3,12,0”.
On my system, with that change, the driver then builds and works.
Regards,
Howard