After Installing Firmware, Device is still not Detected

Rahu X · n00b Joined: 22 Mar 2011 Posts: 7

First off, I'd like to apologize for any stupidity you may see from me, as I'm new to Gentoo.

Next, as the title says, I installed the firmware for my wireless USB device, yet iwconfig still does not detect it.

The device in question is the Rosewill RNX-n180-UBE, which uses the rtl8192su firmware.

I obtained the firmware from the official gentoo package database (net-wireless/rtl8192su-firmware).

So, any suggestions for a total newbie?

BradN · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 2:18 am Post subject:

Is there any related output when you run dmesg (check the end of the output) after having inserted the card?

Rahu X · n00b Joined: 22 Mar 2011 Posts: 7

BradN · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 2:35 am Post subject:

Hmm, I would expect more output than that. Are you sure you've got a driver for it compiled into the kernel (or as a module)? The firmware by itself isn't enough to run the device - it's just the code that the kernel driver loads into the device for the device to operate itself.

Rahu X · n00b Joined: 22 Mar 2011 Posts: 7

I did not see a driver option for rtl8192su or related devices in the kernel, only rtl8192se which is meant for PCI devices and not USB. But even then, I compiled that in the kernel anyway.

I'm actually starting to wonder if my device is somehow not supported.

BradN · Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2011 3:03 am Post subject:

I think the kernel driver is very new and likely to have problems. If you want to use the kernel driver, it would probably be smart to use the newest kernel available.

It might be in the staging drivers section of the kernel config (I forget where it is, not at my gentoo machine to check). But another post I found mentioned something like this.

You're looking for driver name r8712u if this stuff is correct: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=902508

You may have more luck using ndiswrapper and a copy of the windows driver until they get the problems worked out.

wrc1944 · Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 4:53 am Post subject:

I've got the same adapter- it works great with Linux mint, Magia Linux, Opensuse, all using the r8712u driver with usbcore, detects and works out of the box. Also works fine with windows.

However, I still can't figure gentoo out- been going around for days now with newest kernels, staging drivers, firmware, many,many recompile of kernels trying different things.

Tried wicd, which usually is great, then NetworkManager- read all the docs on how to set them up in Gentoo- nothing works. Tried manually editing in all the net settings-- still not working.

This seems to be the problem:

wrc1944 · Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 5:11 pm Post subject:

I've made some progress. I made a /lib/firmware/rtlwifi directory, and copied over all the *.bins from an identical directory from Linux Mint-11, including the r8712u firmware.
On reboot, I can get a normal list of available wireless networks, and apparently the r8712u driver from staging (same one that is reported in Mint) is registered correctly, and the firmware I copied over now loads.

Angrychile · Apprentice Joined: 27 Oct 2009 Posts: 235

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/dwmw2/linux-firmware.git;a=tree;f=rtlwifi;h=11251e0c39e90a9b1999bbd9097bf958a7331735;hb=HEAD
_________________
hola

klz · n00b Joined: 07 Jun 2011 Posts: 42

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/dwmw2/linux-firmware.git;a=tree;f=rtlwifi

I downloaded : http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/dwmw2/linux-firmware.git;a=blob_plain;f=rtlwifi/rtl8712u.bin;hb=HEAD ('raw' of rtl8712u.bin)
and put this in : /lib64/firmware/rtlwifi/

Now my rtl8188 works

jannis · Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2012 9:51 am Post subject:

I've got exactly the same problem here. Using the driver from staging mainline works, but only when you download the firmware manually.
I'll write a bug later so we can get an ebuild similar to "net-wireless/rt2860-firmware" and "net-wireless/rt2870-firmware" but I have to leave home right now. Just wanted you to know

jannis · Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2012 1:25 pm Post subject:

Bug report is here:
https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=430928

(feel free to vote

chithanh · Posted: Sat Aug 11, 2012 6:56 pm Post subject:

Note that you can install the sys-kernel/linux-firmware package which includes firmware for your device. If you don't want all firmware, then USE="savedconfig" allows you to exclude unwanted files from being installed.

jannis · Posted: Sun Aug 12, 2012 7:45 am Post subject:

Strange, I looked for exactly that package (containing everything from linux-firmware git-repo) but overlooked it in the search results ... So actually we don't need the other firmware-packages that install files also found in the git repo?