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Author Topic: RTL8187SE WIFI not working  (Read 6691 times)

Offline aduncan

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RTL8187SE WIFI not working
« on: November 09, 2010, 02:28:43 PM »
I'd be a happy bunny if I could get the wifiworking on my Advent 4211 (MSI Wind 100). I've searched the forum and tried various things, seems that the driver is broken for TC 3.XX.

Can anyone give me guidance on how to fix it?

Andrew

Offline tinypoodle

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Re: RTL8187SE WIFI not working
« Reply #1 on: November 09, 2010, 02:44:45 PM »
That is inaccurate, it simply hasn't been compiled for the kernel used in TC 3.x

Using this driver here as we speak under TC 2.10   ;)
"Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster." Niklaus Wirth - A Plea for Lean Software (1995)

Offline aduncan

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Re: RTL8187SE WIFI not working
« Reply #2 on: November 10, 2010, 11:51:54 AM »
Sorry, I did realise that. Broken was not the right word. Spent some time today installing 2.1 and 2.11.6, and followed every guide I could find.

The rtl8187se-coffee.tcz file shows instructions on how to load the modules correctly with wlan0up, however it keeps telling me that directories or files do not exist. wicd-start complains in a similar fashion.

Has the directory structure of TC changed with each version, so that scripts which worked with older versions can no longer work?

Or am I just thick :P

Andrew

Offline tinypoodle

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"Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster." Niklaus Wirth - A Plea for Lean Software (1995)

Offline tinypoodle

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Re: RTL8187SE WIFI not working
« Reply #4 on: November 10, 2010, 12:23:25 PM »
Attached 2 scripts to load and unload the rtl8187se-coffee driver as found in the 2.x repo.

NOTE: The load script will only work for mounted extensions (default mode), as it accesses the path within /tmp/tcloop to circumvent the symlinked path which is wrong
« Last Edit: November 10, 2010, 12:27:28 PM by tinypoodle »
"Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster." Niklaus Wirth - A Plea for Lean Software (1995)

Offline aduncan

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Re: RTL8187SE WIFI not working
« Reply #5 on: November 10, 2010, 02:18:05 PM »
Thanks for that. rtl8187se_load ran with errors, so I cd'd to the directory and loaded the modules manually. The system stats ap showed that the modules were loaded. Got wps_gui working after I installed libexpat.tcz, but when I ran it, no wifi adapter found.

Given up for the night, got an early start tomorrow.

Andrew

Offline tinypoodle

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Re: RTL8187SE WIFI not working
« Reply #6 on: November 10, 2010, 03:04:19 PM »
You could try to comment the first line of the script out (prepending a '#' before 'cd') and run it from inside the directory of the modules, or also run the included 'wlanup' script from inside the directory.
All that really matters is to load & unload the 6 modules in specific order.

To check if the interface is present:

Code: [Select]
ifconfig -a  |grep wlan
You should get some output in 'dmesg' when the driver gets loaded

"Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster." Niklaus Wirth - A Plea for Lean Software (1995)

Offline aduncan

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Re: RTL8187SE WIFI not working
« Reply #7 on: November 13, 2010, 05:01:42 AM »
I've since spent a lot of time on this problem, without any joy. Come to a decision, I need to do 2 things.

1. Find a Wifi unit which is compatible and cheap, and 2. go and learn a lot more about Linux command line. I was well up in MSDOS 3.1 years ago, but find the transition to Linux painful.

Thanks for your help in the meantime.

Andrew

Offline tinypoodle

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Re: RTL8187SE WIFI not working
« Reply #8 on: November 13, 2010, 01:13:34 PM »
Umm... just a thought...
Are you very sure with all you tried that the hardware switch of your radio was on all the time?
Whatever you would do software wise would be futile otherwise.
Depending on the model of your box, there should probably be a LED indicator, and a switch or a key combo to toggle on/off (e.g. Fn+F6).
"Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster." Niklaus Wirth - A Plea for Lean Software (1995)

Offline tinypoodle

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Re: RTL8187SE WIFI not working
« Reply #9 on: November 15, 2010, 02:12:24 AM »
Thanks for that. rtl8187se_load ran with errors

Running it as normal user would result in errors, you have to run it as root.

I checked, if the radio gets recognized when loading drivers, then there would be output from dmesg. So after loading the drivers you could check by

Code: [Select]
dmesg |tail
"Software gets slower faster than hardware gets faster." Niklaus Wirth - A Plea for Lean Software (1995)