Re: [gentoo-user] realtek 8197 wireless card setup

[Jeff Cranmer]

I made significant progress today.

I manually edited the file /usr/src/linux/drivers/net/wireless/rtl8187_dev.c

There is a static structure near the top of the code,

static struct usb_device_id rtl8187_table[] __devinitdata = {
	/* Realtek */
	{USB_DEVICE(0x0bda, 0x8187)},
	/* netgear */
	{USB_DEVICE(0x0846, 0x6100)},
	{USB_DEVICE(0x0846, 0x6a00)},
	{}
};

I added the line
	{USB_DEVICE(0x0bda, 0x8197)},
in the /* Realtek */ area of the structure, then ran 
	make clean, then 
	make && make modules_install etc.

After rebooting into the modified kernel, I now have iwmaster0 and iwlan0 
lines showing up when I type iwconfig.

The applicable lines of iwconfig are

wmaster0	no wireless extensions

wlan0		IEEE 802.11g	 ESSID="mynetworkESSID"
			Mode:Managed	Frequency=2.417GHz	Access Point: Not associated
			Retry min limit 7	RTS thr:off	Fragment thr=2346B
			Encryption key:<not telling you>
			Link Quality:0		Signal Level:0		Noise Level:0
			Rx Invalid nwid:0	Rx invalid crypt:0	Rx invalid frag:0
			Tx excessive retries:0	Invalid misc:0		Missed beacon:0

I'm not all the way there yet, but this is significant progress.

wpa_supplicant gui still is blank, with the message 'could not get status from 
WPA_supplicant', but at least now I have an interface showing up

It appears that it cannot find an access point.  The access point is active, 
as I can connect my work laptop to it, but so far, the laptop can't see it.

Any further advice gratefully received.

Jeff


On Wednesday 19 December 2007 06:09:50 pm Jeff Cranmer wrote:
> I've tried to run through the instructions at
> http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_rtl8187.
>
> The kernel is configured per that guide, and I get the message:
> usbcore: registered new interface driver rtl8187
>
> When I try to run ifconfig wlan0 up, however, I get:
> wlan0: unknown interface: no such device
>
> I get the same result if I run ifconfig wlan up (net.wlan is the symlink
> that I set up in /etc/init.d)
>
> The wireless section of my /etc/conf.d/net file reads
> mode_wlan="managed"
> wpa_supplicant_wlan="-Dwext -c
> /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant_RTL8187.conf" config_wlan=( "dhcp" )
> dhcp_wlan="-R -G"
>
> wpa_supplicant has been emerged.
>
> Jeff
>
> On Sunday 16 December 2007 12:14:42 pm Mick wrote:
> > On Sunday 16 December 2007, Jeff Cranmer wrote:
> > > All I get for iwconfig is
> > > lo		no wireless extensions
> > > eth0	no wireless extensions.
> >
> > This means that the driver has not been loaded yet.  In generic terms
> > you'll need to install the necessary driver for your WiFi device (either
> > the new one in the kernel or emerge net-wireless/rtl8187, or ndiswrapper
> > and the MS Windows driver).  If you build the driver as a module then you
> > need to modprobe -v rtl8187, while you keep an eye on the logs to see how
> > things go (tail -f /var/log/messages).  You have seen this, right?
> >
> > http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_rtl8187
> >
> > > I think I need some more info in /etc/conf.d/net, and need somehow to
> > > create the necessary /etc/init.d/net.wlan0 or whatever driver.
> > >
> > > The only 'net.anything' drivers present at the moment are net.lo and
> > > net.eth0
> >
> > You will of course have to manually create a symlink between net.wlan0 ->
> > net.lo (or whatever your new WiFi device is recognised as by the kernel)
> > so that you can bring it up by running /etc/init.d/net.wlan0 start.  But
> > this is only necessary for autoloading the driver through the runlevel
> > scripts. To try it out follow the instructions in the Wiki page above.
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