Realtek RTL8188E Wireless LAN 802.11n PCI-E NIC

[dbabits]

Tried Precise Puppy 5.7.1
Tried Slacko Puppy 5.6 PAE

Card came with Toshiba Satellite S75-A7221

Thank you for help.

[watchdog]

I saw you can download the xp driver from internet. I suggest to try by ndiswrapper driver.

[tempestuous]

Before you resort to a kludgey workaround such as ndiswrapper, some diagnosis will identify which Linux driver is compatible.
Run this command -

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lspci -n

and report the results. The numbers we need are of the format "xxxx:xxxx"

[dbabits]

Thanks tempestuous,

# lspci -n
00:00.0 0600: 8086:0c04 (rev 06)
00:02.0 0300: 8086:0416 (rev 06)
00:03.0 0403: 8086:0c0c (rev 06)
00:14.0 0c03: 8086:8c31 (rev 04)
00:16.0 0780: 8086:8c3a (rev 04)
00:1a.0 0c03: 8086:8c2d (rev 04)
00:1b.0 0403: 8086:8c20 (rev 04)
00:1c.0 0604: 8086:8c10 (rev d4)
00:1c.2 0604: 8086:8c14 (rev d4)
00:1c.3 0604: 8086:8c16 (rev d4)
00:1d.0 0c03: 8086:8c26 (rev 04)
00:1f.0 0601: 8086:8c49 (rev 04)
00:1f.2 0106: 8086:8c03 (rev 04)
00:1f.3 0c05: 8086:8c22 (rev 04)
07:00.0 0280: 10ec:8179 (rev 01)
08:00.0 0200: 1969:1091 (rev 10)

[tempestuous]

07:00.0 0280: 10ec:8179 (rev 01)

OK, that's a very new Realtek wifi chipset. None of the standard Realtek in-kernel drivers (rtl8192ce/rtl8192se/rtl8192de) supports that device ID.
I did some reading, and it appears the latest 3.10 kernels include a new driver - rtl8188ee - which is what you need.
I have sent to message to the developer of Slacko, 01micko, to check on the status of this new driver.

[tempestuous]

I just learned that the PAE version of Slacko 5.6 definitely contains the new rtl8188ee driver ...
but the compatible firmware is missing. This is a common problem whenever Puppy's kernel is upgraded.
So I now attach the missing firmware. Go ahead and install this dotpet in Slacko-5.6-PAE. Once installed, unload/reload the driver, as such -

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rmmod rtl8188ee
modprobe rtl8188ee

Now run the Network Wizard (the FULL wizard, not the Simple Wizard) and you should see a wifi interface listed. Go ahead and configure it.

[dbabits]

It worked!
It gave me a warning about WPA (the router is set to use it)
and made me save the following to /etc/network-wizard/wpa_modules:
Module: rtl8188ee
wpa_supplicant driver: wext

but, after that it worked.

Thanks a lot tempestuous!
One problem down, ~5 more to go, but they deserve separate posts.

One related issue though is that wired interface is not detected.
Less of a problem now, but still - any idea?
(tried to attach sysinfo output, but getting "The Extension txt is not allowed", similar for any extension)
Thanks again.

[tempestuous]

08:00.0 0200: 1969:1091 (rev 10)

Oh dear, you really do have the latest hardware in your laptop - that's an Atheros AR8161 ethernet chip, which requires a new driver called alx.
I have just asked the Slacko developers to enable it in the next release of Slacko-5.6-PAE, and maybe even give you a dotpet in the short term -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 142#737142

[dbabits]

Thank you for the followup tempestuous! (I have to say, this is what makes puppy different from certain other OS from the monopoly
I'll list all other issues I have here, but will probably need to create separate posts:

1) UEFI vs CSM boot option in BIOS: Windows 8 only understands UEFI, puppy: only CSM-need to keep changing back-forth if I want dual boot.

2) Black screen upon startup. To work around, I enter at boot: puppy pfix=ram i915.modeset=0 (seen in some other post). This works, but then it doesn't load my save file, and so I had to redo network exercise again.

3) Installed puppy to USB flash drive to be able to edit .cfg file with the above info, but got: "No bootable device - insert boot disk" (USB is listed first in boot order in BIOS)

4) So, if I insert the CD, I know how to boot, but cannot edit the .cfg file, and save file is skipped, and so no network. But if I don't-I can't boot at all.

But it's OK, working through the issues..

[tempestuous]

UEFI is black magic to me, but I know of two Puppy derivatives which have UEFI-enabled kernels: LightHouse64 and Fatdog64 -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=83402
http://distro.ibiblio.org/fatdog/web/fa ... drive.html
I suppose you could change to one of these ... but you would need to check with the developers whether they have the rtl8188ee and alx drivers that your laptop requires.
At least for now you have a working solution by changing your bios setting.

I enter at boot: puppy pfix=ram i915.modeset=0

"pfix=ram" ignores the savefile during bootup, and I can't see that this should be necessary. So just do this -

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puppy i915.modeset=0

Installed puppy to USB flash drive to be able to edit .cfg file with the above info

No ......... don't do that. All you should need to edit is menu.lst -
find the line that starts with "kernel ..." and append " i915.modeset=0" (without the quotation marks).

[dbabits]

I tried FatDog64- it didn't boot with UEFI and it doesn't have rtl8188ee and alx, anyway-will follow up with the developer there.

As to black screen, my bad, I should've used:
"puppy pfix=copy i915.modeset=0"

Anyway, can menu.lst be copied to the hard drive? Because I can't edit CDROM, and USB boot is not working for some reason (works on another laptop, so I know USB stick is good)

[tempestuous]

Yes, you can install grub4dos onto your hard drive, configured to boot to USB ... but you will be dual-booting with Windows, and IMO the best boot regime is to keep the Windows bootloader, and chain-load to grub4dos. This is quite straightforward with Windows XP, but it's more complicated with Vista/Win7/Win8.

So I think it's worth trying to get full USB booting to work for your hardware. I just did a test-install to USB, myself, with some interesting results:
- if I run the "Puppy universal installer" to install to USB flash, the flash drive is then fully bootable on my hardware. This is interesting, since no special formatting was done to the flash drive, and it had no boot flag.
- if I run the "BootFlash install Puppy to USB" option, prior to installation, the flash drive is then NON-BOOTABLE on my hardware.

So try both options. To get rid of any special formatting (and the boot flag) you should re-format your flash drive under Windows as FAT32.

And sorry, I see that USB installs use syslinux (not grub). So yes, you will probably need to edit syslinux.cfg, to add "i915.modeset=0".

[djb263]

Good day all

Forgive me if this is a newb question.
I have exactly the same problem as dbabits, my wireless adapter, RTL8188 wont work.
However, I am running fatdog64-630.

Will the above solution work for fatdog ?

[Max Headroom]

Also tempestuous I was Hoping that this RTL8188E Firmware Patch might work 4 RTL8188ETV Nano USB Wireless Network Adapter, these aRe Common, Convenient & Affordable, again this is to work 4 ChromeBook Pup Built on Open Box Precise Pup, this is My Regular Daily Driver Puppy.

Please tempestuous I Hope this isn't too much of a burden

:)K

[Semme]

What's the device ID on that (Edimax, TP-Link) card?

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lsusb -v

If compatible, you could probably compile and install it yourself.

[Max Headroom]

Realtek Screen Print attached,

Thanx

:DK

[Semme]

Which kernel's that pup ship.. 3.9.11? If yes, it should be new enough to build.

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uname -r

No screenies, type it out. Again, if 3.9.11, is its devx onboard'n loaded?

Maybe you're running this OBP version?

[Max Headroom]

Yes Semme, Confirmed 3.9.11,

Predicted Correctly like ( Actually We Love ) Roger Waters / Pink Floyd, The Wall 1979 Mother ( How did He See Trump coming 38 years ago? )

I Digress, where were We... Ah Cats & Dogs...

K

[Semme]

Does this echo (spit out the same "lib" line)?

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ls -l /lib/firmware/rtlwifi/rtl8188eufw.bin

In Quickpet, under "Useful pets," tell me about these..

[Max Headroom]

Pardon the Delay Semme 4 My Action ...
like the Attached Capture says Cannot Access, ... No such File or Directory

re Useful Pets Apparently the Primary Repository is Down, since Clearly the internet is Working if only via Ethernet Cable K