Activating Wifi Usb Dongles


Pleng

Well-Known Member
Joined
Dec 28, 2006
Messages
3,030
OK So I'm trying to test THIS product for compatibility with Pandora. lsusb recognises the device but how can I switch it on and connect to a network? Is there some kind of terminal command I have to enter to activate it?
 
I'm not sure where your terminal knowledge is at, mine is certainly basic, so forgive me if this stuff is obvious.

Have you used
Code:
ifconfig
or
Code:
iwconfig
to get a list of network devices? This should give you an ID (eg. wlan1), then you can do:
Code:
sudo ifconfig wlan1 up
 
ifconfig only displays the loopback and wlan0 (once wifi has been enabled)

iwconfig lists:

lo no wireless extensions
usb0 no wireless extensions
wlan0 blahblah.....
 
Hmm... do you have access to a known working adapter? It would be nice to have a control specimen :science:

I'm home now, just plugged an Asus USB Wifi dongle into my Ubuntu box and ifconfig lists it as wlan1. Maybe yours isn't supported.
 
This has Linux support (2.6 - but I'm using hotfix 4 so it should work, right?) on the back of the box. I'll boot into Ubuntu and double check, but I guess this is a Pandora issue rather than a standard Linux issue.
 
Like mentioned in another thread, there are no wifi drivers included in pandora by default (except for builtin wifi of course). Those wifi sticks usually need firmware blobs that have limited distribution rights anyway. We could probably make "community wifi driver pack" or something with common drivers and firmwares maybe. I'll leave the decision to ED as usual :p
 
Well the driver supplied by ASUS is apparently a source code driver so hopefully it should be possible to install and make. Unfortunately my Laptop's keyboard is so broken that I'm not able to get root access (one of the keys needed to enter the password, amongst others, simply doesn't work) to try it. I need to get myself a new usb keyboard anyway so I'll probably do that tomorrow. Don't know I'll have time to try and compile tomorrow though as it's my birthday. And in all honesty I'll probably be hung over on Saturday. Fly back to blighty on Sunday :)(). Gonna need some rest on Monday. Hopefully I'll get a chance to test it and get it working before the competition ends (will be VERY difficult to get going without a Pandora at hand!)
 
OK no joy so far. Downloaded, unzipped, untarred and un gz'd the archive (common is this REALLY a good way to package data?!!) then following the very first insstruction of typing 'make' into the command prompt I get the, very accurate, error message that no directory 'build' exists.

Not terribly sure what to do from here :(
 
Pleng said:
then following the very first insstruction of typing 'make' into the command prompt I get the, very accurate, error message that no directory 'build' exists.

Not terribly sure what to do from here :(
Create the directory?
 
Last edited by a moderator:
oops my bad. it's actually saying:

/lib/modules/2.6.27.46-omap1/build: No such file or directory

and creating that directory gives me a 'no rule to make modules' error

I'm missing some kernal source?
 
You're missing all of the kernel source.
Building a driver for an existing kernel I've found to be a right pain. It's easy if you've built your own kernel: you've got everything you need to build additional drivers right there; if you're building for an existing kernel, you need to find the exact source that was used to build that kernel in order for it to work.
 
I have found an updated driver in the Ubuntu Forum ...http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1374037
Download at http://sites.google.com/site/solidpace/rtl8712_8188_8191_8192SU_usb_linux_v2.6.0005.20091112.p4.zip?attredirects=0
Asus realase is v2.6.0003 and this is v2.6.0005p4 .

This is the release history :
<h1 class="rfm-heading-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; page-break-inside: auto; page-break-after: auto;"> Release History:</h1> <h1 class="rfm-heading-western" style="margin-top: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0cm; page-break-inside: auto; page-break-after: auto;">
</h1> V1.0.0001 – 2009/01/21

  1. First Released
  2. only supports USB interface
  3. add features about 802.11n draft 2.0
  4. RX-AMSDU (4K, 8K)
  5. currently only supports 20MHz BW
V2.0.0001 – 2009/4/27

  1. WiFi 11n-Certificated
  2. Supported 20/40 MHz BW Switching
  3. Supported Fedora 10
V2.6.0001 – 2009/9/30

  1. Add Rx_BH
  2. Add Tx_BH
  3. Fixed system hung up issue when cancel rx timer.
V2.6.0005 – 2009/10/13

  1. put usb rx aggregation to the rx_bh
  2. support Rx TCP_CSUM_OFFLOAD
  3. fixed ping issue on DMP Platform with D-LINK DIR655 AP
  4. To report encryption_cap. When wpa_supplicant & Network Management require
V2.6.0005 – 2009/11/12

  1. fixed ad-hoc issue when using Network Manager
  2. update fw to fixed long run testing issue
V2.6.0005.p1 – 2009/11/12

1. Fixed the power saving issue.

V2.6.0005.p2 – 2009/11/12

1. support high power mode

V2.6.0005.p3 – 2009/11/12

  1. Added a script to clean the r8192s_usb driver for avoiding the conflict that 8712u and r8192s_usb drivers are running at the same time.
  2. Updated the thread_enter function for some SDIO bugs.
V2.6.0005.p4 – 2009/11/12

  1. Added two VID/PIDs into supporting list.
  2. The driver will disable the 11n mode if the attaching device is with these two new VID/PIDs.

Anyway you need the kernel source to build ..

If you sell it i'm thinking to buy from PandaUSB...
 
Thanks for all the help guys. I've unfortunately got no time for this for the next couple of days, have a flight to catch :(
 
OK for all intents and purposes I am no longer the owner of a Pandora, so am unable to continue testing this. If anybody else would like to take on the task, I will be happy to send the device to them.
 
sorry for the bump... is there anybody with the know how to try and get this working up for a free wifi dongle???
 
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