Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

[tempestuous]

NOTE: The drivers in this thread are compatible with the 2.6.21.7 kernel in the Puppy3.x series and Puppy 4.0.
Be careful - there is an experimental version of Puppy 4.0 with 2.6.25 kernel - this is obviously incompatible. Also be aware that there were several alpha and beta versions of Puppy4 which are also incompatible.
Puppy 4.1 will have a completely new kernel.

Barry, while looking through the kernel config for Puppy 3.0, I noticed that "Support downloading firmware images with Host AP driver" is not enabled.
Device Drivers > Network device support > Wireless LAN > Support downloading firmware images with Host AP driver
This setting is necessary to support the 2 hostap wifi devices which require firmware loading; the D-Link DWL-520 rev E (PCI) and DWL-650 rev P (cardbus).
Puppy already contains the necessary firmware and utilities.

And from an earlier forum post I also learned that the device ID's for the DWL-650 are not properly defined in the hostap source code, and this can be fixed with a patch from here -
http://hostap.epitest.fi/bugz/show_bug.cgi?id=197

So I compiled the hostap modules with both of these changes, and now attach.

[tempestuous]

Network Wizard improved
- support added for ALL prism2 wifi modules (not just prism2_usb)
- WPA support added for Realtek r8180 and r8187 wifi modules
- WPA support added for zd1211rw (Zydas) module

Update May 8 2008
- 8 character length WPA passphrases now work
- WPA setup modification, suggested by Pizzasgood here -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=24961
- /etc/WAG/profile-conf improved, as per urban soul's modification here -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=194985#194985
- WPA support added for rtl8180, rtl8187, rt61pci, rt73usb wifi modules

For the sake of completeness, all Network Wizard components are included in the dotpet, even though only 2 scripts have been modified.

[tempestuous]

dhcpcd was upgraded in Puppy 2.17 to version 3.1.4.
Some problems were reported, and Puppy 3.0b3 has reverted to the old dhcpcd-1.3.22 ...
but rerwin reports there may be problems with this as well, and suggests that ver 2.0.4 from Slackware 12 might be best. So here it is for those who want to try it.

[Leon]

[kirk]

Dhcpcd 2.04 works for me. But all of the versions seem to work for me. Though the old version (1.3.22) would down the interface if it didn't get an address and you'd have to do a ifconfig <interface> up to get it working again. You might want to send Barry a PM about this so that he'll be sure to see it.

[tempestuous]

UPDATE May 3 2008
Here are drivers for Realtek wifi devices.
rtl8180-0.22-Belkin is the old opensource driver (same as Puppy already conains) but patched to support devices with the newer RTL8185 chipset, specifically the Belkin F5D7000 v7 (PCI) and F5D7010 v7 (Cardbus).

rtl8185-proprietary is the vendor-provided version from the Realtek website.

The "rtl-wifi" versions are more modern opensource drivers from http://rtl-wifi.sourceforge.net/wiki/Main_Page
These are development versions of the Realtek drivers, and are not 100% reliable. They are very similar to proprietary version of the driver, and for PCI/Cardbus devices with RTL8180/RTL8085 chipsets the proprietary driver will be the better choice ... until Puppy 4.1 with 2.6.25.4 kernel is released, anyway.
But for USB devices with Realtek RTL8187 chipset, this driver is the only option (the proprietary RTL8187 USB version fails to compile in Puppy3.x and 4.0). This module is called "r8187".
First try the latest revision 62, but if it fails to receive/transmit, install the older revision 52.
Instructions are installed as /root/my-applications/rtl-wifi-README.txt
Significantly, it's necessary to remove Puppy's existing Realtek modules and ieee80211 modules. You must delete (or shift) everything in /lib/modules/2.6.21.5/kernel/net/ieee80211/ and /lib/modules/2.6.21.7/r8180/

[tempestuous]

This is the ALSA snd-hda-intel module, patched to add support for Gateway notebooks:
MX3410, MX3412, MT3423, MT3707, ML3109

The patch is from here -
https://bugtrack.alsa-project.org/alsa-bug/view.php?id=3036

After installing the dotpet, reboot. Sound might possibly work straight away, but more likely there's one further configuration change necessary; open /etc/modprobe.conf in Geany. At the end of the file you will see -

[RMP]

tempestuous

I have installed the patch for the Zydas 1211b chipset to enable WPA. It is working fine, thanks for the patch for this.

Richard

[tempestuous]

The recent official Zydas "vendor" wifi driver from http://zd1211.wiki.sourceforge.net/VendorDriver
apparently supports some newer Zydas-based wifi devices not supported by Puppy 3.00's zd1211rw driver.
I now attach this package. It contains two different modules; zd1211 and zd1211b. If you have a recent Zydas chipset it's more likely to be supported by the zd1211b module.
After installing the dotpet, you will need to unload the standard module, and load the new one, like this -

[bbach]

tempestuous, Could you look at this post regarding updated e1000 drivers?

http://murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=22507

If you could help, I'd appreciate it. -- Bud

[tempestuous]

Latest e1000 driver for Intel PRO/1000 LAN devices.

[bbach]

Worked perfectly first time. As a mini HOWTO, for this package:

1) Download the .pet package and save it to a hard drive on the computer you are going to boot puppy on or to a jumpdrive
2) Boot puppy
3) Mount the drive where the .pet file is (Drives icon)
4) load the pet file with the pet manager (Install icon)
5) run setup to setup the network (Setup)
6) load the e1000 driver
7) your NIC should now be present
Browse the web, read your email, etc...

BTW, This should make it's way into the main distribution. How does that happen?

Thanks so much tempestuous!

-- Bud

[tempestuous]

There is a special variant of the Atheros wifi chipset; AR5007EG, which requires a specially patched version of the MADWiFi driver (ath_pci), now attached.
This wifi chipset is found in several recent notebook computers including the ASUS Eee 700-series (but not 701SD) and 900, 900A, 900HA, 901GO, 904HA, 904HD, 1000HA, 1000HD.

Note that the EEE model 901 and 1000 contain a completely different chipset; Ralink RT2860.

Many people have reported success with this driver, but some people get "no wireless interface detected" in the Network Wizard.
Forum member glassparrot reports that to get this driver installed and working you must first disable the Eee's wifi device in bios, then later re-enable the wifi device after the driver is installed -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?p=208066#208066
I cannot see how or why this method would make any difference ... but if it works, great!

UPDATE Feb 2009:
The Eee 701SD is an exception. It has the Realtek RTL8187SE wifi chipset, and this is also found in the MSI Wind U100 mini-notebook computer. This is a miniPCI wifi device, not to be confused with the RTL8187 USB chipset.
There is an experimental driver for this chipset from
http://code.google.com/p/msi-wind-linux/
which I now attach. After installing this dotpet, reboot. The new driver is called "r8180", and will now appear in the Network Wizard.

[sciencegeek]

I've read that support for WPA for the realtek 8180 chipset was added to puppy, but the network wizard doesn't offer it to me, just open and WEP. I get a message that the r8180 driver doesn't support WPA and in wizard WPA selection is grayed out. On the plus side, puppy 3.01 recognizes my hardware, and I can "see" the access points within range, so probably it should work under WEP. My PCI card, a Zyxel G302v3 works fine in WPA running under XP, so the firmware definitely supports WPA.

Next, I unloaded the r8180 driver, and tried ndiswrapper using the XP driver from the Zyxel CDROM, and downloaded from realtek, and from another realtek 8185 based PCI card CDROM. As far as I can tell these are all the same driver. I get a message

[tempestuous]