armv6 and realtek firmware

[stephanmg]

Dear all,

let me thank everbody for working on this exciting project.

I have an old Raspberry Pi (armv6) on which I would like to use my wireless usb adapter (Atheros) with TCL version 11.
I could not manage to find the atheros firmware here: http://distro.ibiblio.org/tinycorelinux/11.x/armv6/tcz/

I followed this instructionst to set up wifi:  >>>http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=20964.0<<<
That is I loaded wifi.tcz and execute wifi.sh but it does not show the usb adapter or error messages in dmesg.

I guess this is because I do not have the atheros firmware loaded nor the corresponding kernel module? So, is armv6 still supported in TCL11? I presume I am doing something very obvious wrong.

Thanks in advance.

Best wishes,
Stephan

[Juanito]

You could try downloading this manually:

http://tinycorelinux.net/11.x/x86_64/tcz/firmware-atheros.tcz

If you use the "lsusb" command from the usbutils extension, does it show your wifi adapter?

[Greg Erskine]

I think that might be the wrong link for a RPi?

[Juanito]

Since it's for a plug-in device, the firmware would be machine agnostic, no?

[Rich]

Hi Juanito
USB devices are intended to plug into USB ports regardless of the hosts architecture. Firmware is intended to run on the guests
(Atheros) hardware. So it should not matter which repository it came from.

As long as it only modifies internal operations of the chip, I would expect the firmware to work regardless of how it is interfaced.

[aus9]

I do not have RPi but it looks like lsusb command is supplied by usbutils.
http://repo.tinycorelinux.net/11.x/armv6/tcz/usbutils.tcz
On TC64 without loading any firmware, my non-atheros dongle still reports its usb-id  via the lsusb command
so stephanmg if you are unable to download via ethernet the firmware TCE could you post your usb id for your adaptor please
I am not sure if repo has wireless modules.

[stephanmg]

Thanks for all your suggestions, I will try it out and report back to you when I'm back home from work.

Best wishes,
Stephan

[Greg Erskine]

Thanks for the info about USB, I wasn't aware

[aus9]

Yikes, I searched poorly.

I am not sure if repo has wireless modules

They are here for arm6
http://tinycorelinux.net/11.x/armv6/tcz/wireless-4.19.81-piCore.tcz.list

[stephanmg]

You could try downloading this manually:

http://tinycorelinux.net/11.x/x86_64/tcz/firmware-atheros.tcz

If you use the "lsusb" command from the usbutils extension, does it show your wifi adapter?

Hello,

yes it shows my adapter! How would I add the firmware/atheros module then? Thanks for pointing me into the right direction.

Should I install wireless-4.19.81-piCore.tcz? And then modprobe ath9?

Best wishes,
Stephan

[Juanito]

It would be good if you could paste what lsusb shows for your adapter.

You need to load the firmware-atheros extension before you load the wifi extension (which will load the other required extensions automatically). If things go well, the driver for your hardware should be loaded automatically.

Once you have loaded the extensions, use this command to check if the atheros driver loaded the firmware:

Code: [Select]

$ dmesg | tail -20..and paste the result here.

[aus9]

Juanito

I use ethernet so forgive me for thinking I know something....but if my list link in reply 8 is correct, it appears that the wl module TCE has no install script?

and it looks like it might be the same for arm7/7l too? my arm7 info file has no mention of running depmod -a etc

[Juanito]

tce-load takes care of module extensions.

[stephanmg]

lsusb reports this: Bus 001 Device 005: ID 1a2c:0e24.

Where would I find the atheros-firmware extenion exactly and would I load it with tce-load?

Should I grab the extension here and use tce-load? http://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php?topic=18483.0

It would be good if you could paste what lsusb shows for your adapter.

You need to load the firmware-atheros extension before you load the wifi extension (which will load the other required extensions automatically). If things go well, the driver for your hardware should be loaded automatically.

Once you have loaded the extensions, use this command to check if the atheros driver loaded the firmware:

Code: [Select]

$ dmesg | tail -20..and paste the result here.

[Juanito]

Code: [Select]

$ wget http://tinycorelinux.net/11.x/x86_64/tcz/firmware-atheros.tcz
$ wget http://tinycorelinux.net/11.x/x86_64/tcz/firmware-atheros.tcz.md5.txt
$ mv firmware-atheros.tcz* /mnt/mmcblk0p2/tce/optional
$ tce-load -i firmware-atheros