Help needed to make Realtek 8191SU USB WiFi stick work on Beaglebone
Eric Dormer
Hi Folks,
After a few
days of struggling I confess I am confused, and stuck. I need some help. (I am a newbie....)
I have a USB2
WiFi dongle, containing a Realtek
RTL8191SU
802.11n WLAN Adapter chip. I would like to use it on my recently
acquired Beaglebone card.
I am unable to find the appropriate firmware files for the Realtek RTL8191SU USB WiFi adapeter. Once I find them I believe they go in /firmware/rtlwifi but I have searched high and low and so far I am unable to find them. I also seem to be having some problem getting the board to see wlan0.
Any help or tips are welcome.
--- details ---
Since the beaglebone card was new, I did an "opkg update", followed by "opkg install", which ran for an hour or two installing fresh modules. There were a few errors which I found answers to elsewhere on this forum, and consequently they were fixed.
I ensured the wireless-tools
package was installed properly, since previously the iwconfig command was unrecognized. After the install, the wireless-tools package
is now revision 1:29-r4 .
root@beaglebone:/# opkg install wireless-tools
Package wireless-tools (1:29-r4) installed in root is up to date.
I did an "lsmod", and observed a module for r8712u was
installed.
root@beaglebone:/lib/firmware# lsmod
Module Size Used by
r8712u 118788 0
g_mass_storage 24010 0
ipv6 210434 18
I did an iwconfig, but it appeared the wlan0 interface was non-functional. From
reading different posts on the internet, I concluded I needed the firmware
drivers for the USB stick. I was unable
to find any ready-to-go for the Beaglebone.
I did visit the Realtek website and download their linux driver package,
but it appears it needs to be compiled, and currently I am unsure how to use
the makefile as provided to recompile
the drivers. It seems likely to me that
someone out there has already done this, since its a pretty common chip.
Anyway, I then removed the r8712u module, intending to install it again hoping this might prompt my board to recognize the USB WiFi dongle, however after removal, I was unable to find the r8712u module to install it again. Things were not looking good, so I rebooted. Later once the beaglebone came up again, I ran lsmod again but now it seems there are no modules installed....
root@beaglebone:/lib/firmware# lsmod
Module
Size Used by
<nothing>
Also, now when I run iwconfig, it appears no wlan0 device is detected.
root@beaglebone:/# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
Clearly I am out of my depth here. Does anyone have a suggestion about how to ensure the necessary modules get loaded? Does anyone have a suggestion about where I might pick up compiled Firmware object files for the Realtek WiFi chip? Any other tips are also welcome.
And yes, I am trying to understand makefiles, etc, sufficient to recompile the Realtek linux drivers from scratch, but I am finding it difficult going.
Cheers,
Eric Dormer
Arthur Neves
Christophe Gimenez
But you can find some realtek firmwares here
http://ftp.br.debian.org/debian/pool/non-free/f/firmware-nonfree/firmware-linux-nonfree_0.35_all.deb
The .deb file is no more than a tar file
I had no problem using a dlink realtek based usb adapter under 3.0.17+
and 3.0.25+ kernels