[SOLVED]How many of you have problems with Realtek 8192se Wireless Adapter

[agmg]

Noob alert

What is the purpose of dkms-r8192se and rtl8192se-firmware? You say that dkms is not required because it is included in the kernel. Does dkms require the firmware to work properly?

[Texstar]

r8192se kernel driver reqiures the 8192 firmware to work properly. The 8192se kernel driver is already included in the 2.6.38 kernel. Any kernel prior to that does not contain the 8192se kernel driver and requires it to be built with the dkms-8192se package.

[agmg]

I have kernel 2.6.38.8 so the driver is included. I guess the firmware is not installed by default during installation.

Perhaps, this is the reason why my wireless adapter wasn't working properly when I first installed Phoenix?

[wedgetail]

agmg
Looks like you are getting close, sorry I forgot about the "8192SE-firmware" I got rather confused when I saw the 'long' result of the locate.

You are not the only one getting confused in the terminology, like you if the 'driver' is installed why is 'firmware' needed as well. To me firmware indicates 'software program(s)' and a driver to me is also 'software'.    Anyway that is the price to pay for switching to Linux, a hard but fun learning curve for some of us.

In short the answer to your last post is likely to be a yes.  If you have the time try and make a new install attempt from a LiveCD. Despite you are using Phoenix and I no little about it I am interested to see this solve.

I have a liveCD here but it seems to screw up my hard drive allocation, the naming is out of order with other pclos systems. I am a bit reluctant to make an install under these circumstances.  Will turn off all my 'extra' usb drives so I only have my two internal hard drives connected and see what the Phoenix LiveCD does then.

Can you find time to do a fresh install on a spare partition and report?  

Edit:
Ok, I have Phoenix LiveCD running and it seems not to have figured out my hard drives, even when all the external USB drives have been removed. I will not risk an install right now. (The two drives have been swopped, needs some more looking before I install)

I use a mirror here in Australia, and for some reason it seems the repo list on the LiveCD has an error which I think may be a leftover from earlier days.

LiveCD AARNET repo url:
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/pclinuxos/apt/pclinuxos/2010/base/pkglist.main: 404 Not Found

If I modify this a bit:
http://mirror.aarnet.edu.au/pub/pclinuxos/pclinuxos/apt/pclinuxos/2010.......

Then it seems to work fine.

agmg
I can confirm that the r8192se-firmware is available via Synaptic from the repo, but it does not seem to be part of the LiveCD (as Texstar posted).

Ok, in my case this is not a problem as my driver is rt61, from Synaptic, this is installed on the LiveCD:

Firmware for the RT61 chip
This package contains the firmware files for the RT61 chip, which is
used in WLAN PCMCIA cards.

So my system went straight on the internet and I am using the embedded Firefox right now while running the liveCD.

Am I right in thinking that in your case you could not connect to the internet using the Phoenix LiveCD?  

[agmg]

Once again thank you for your time...

Code: [Select]

Anyway that is the price to pay for switching to Linux, a hard but fun learning curve for some of us.
It's not a price to pay, it is a choice One of the reason I turned to Linux: to learn new things (and to get away from E V I L )

Anyway, lets summarize a bit to ease future reference: neither on live session nor after install, the adapter is recognized by the OS but not working properly. No wireless networks appear. Seems that the package "rtl8192se-firmware" need to be installed also, since it's missing from the liveCD (is this hard to be fixed?). So, the solution is to connect the pc with an ethernet cable, do an update and an installation of the firmware and on the next boot, wireless should be working fine.

I will try this later this evening to confirm it and mark it as solved.

Thanks both for your help and advice.

@wedgetail : Can you give some more info (in a few words) about what you were trying to figure out with all these commands?

[wedgetail]

agmg

Ah, now I am happy, you have confirmed what I thought ought to be happening.  

1.. Anybody running the r8192SE module will be in trouble with Phoenix liveCD as it stands as far as connecting to the internet with wireless.
2.. The driver 8192SE is included in the latest kernel (see above from Texstar)
3.. For wireless to work without interaction on the user part to connect to the internet, a small piece of extra software need to be installed, the 8192se-firmware
4.. If you only have wireless access, this becomes the chicken and egg.  In your case using the cable connection to install the 8192SE-firmware should fix it.

Should be easy to check out with the Phoenix LiveCD:

A.. Boot the liveCD and connect with cable to internet.
B.. Run Synaptic > Reload > Find the 8192SE-firmware > install that (you have to fill in the missing steps)
C.. Remove the cable connection, but do not re-boot as you will of course promptly loos what you have installed
D.. root terminal and do service -f  network :

This is what happens on my system, but I have my LAN connected  

Code: [Select]

[root@localhost gert]# service -f  network
Shutting down interface eth0:                                                                           [  OK  ]
Shutting down interface wlan0:  Failed to kill daemon. (No such file or directory)
                                                                                                        [  OK  ]
Shutting down loopback interface:                                                                       [  OK  ]
Bringing up loopback interface:                                                                         [  OK  ]
Configuring wireless regulatory domain                                                                  [  OK  ]
Bringing up interface eth0:                                                                             [  OK  ]
Bringing up interface wlan0:                                                                            [  OK  ]
[root@localhost gert]#

As you can see I am running both cable and LAN simultaneously.  Not recommended and I only do this when I forget to turn off Wireless or when I test.  There is some interference now and it does not work so well running both on this MiniMe system.

Regarding "all those commands" : Well there is a link in one of the very first posts here in the thread,

http://www.pclinuxos.com/forum/index.php/topic,56672.0.html


The owner "coffeetime" have listed a very extensive post here which almost without exception will get you through the most difficult wireless problem.  I have my own smaller subset of steps, very similar and I was asking you to provide information which would very soon have shown some oddities.  

Because I have received an enormous amount of help from Forum members making the transition to Linux, I will as time allows, contribute to help solve problems.  Wireless is an area that I happen to have spent quite some time many months ago. Helping you here was a bit of a refresher for me as I also forget soon (though I have my records).

[agmg]

I just did a fresh install of Phoenix and connected to Internet using the ethernet connection. Downloaded the package "rtl8192se-firmware" and installed it, and on the next boot, the wireless connection was working just fine.

Thanks once more for your help!

Marked as solved

PS: You should consider including this package to the next iso of Phoenix. If someone can't connect the computer through ethernet and only uses wireless through this adapter, then he can't solve this issue unless installing a driver from Realtek.

[Texstar]

I just did a fresh install of Phoenix and connected to Internet using the ethernet connection. Downloaded the package "rtl8192se-firmware" and installed it, and on the next boot, the wireless connection was working just fine.

Thanks once more for your help!

Marked as solved

PS: You should consider including this package to the next iso of Phoenix. If someone can't connect the computer through ethernet and only uses wireless through this adapter, then he can't solve this issue unless installing a driver from Realtek.

It was accidentally left it out in error.

[agmg]

Thanks Tex!