Wifi does not work on A20 debian 3.4.67

[fab]

Hi,

I tested 4 different wifi USB dongle, and none of them are recognized by the system.
"lsusb" display the proper information related to the usb device.
Here is what I get for netgear dongle:
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0846:9041 NetGear, Inc. WNA1000M 802.11bgn [Realtek RTL8188CUS]
So it's a RTL8188 device, which is in the list for working device with that board.
When I plug the device in, nothing appears in dmesg, it seems that no module exist, or no module is loaded.
And ofcourse "ifup wlan0" does not work, as wlan0 does not exist.

Could you help me to find out what is wrong with my setup...


Thx
Fab

[ragupo]

You need the firmware. Do you have it?

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apt-get update && apt-get install firmware-realtek
Reboot after installing (i think). For intel dongles the package is called firmware-iwlwifi.
I use ceni for configuring my networks, it is really the best for cli network configuring.
It's not in official repos (yet), so get it from one of these places: http://www.filewatcher.com/m/ceni_2.38_all.deb.75280-0.html
Install with

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dpkg -i ceni*
you'll get errors caused by unmet dependencies so

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apt-get install -f
will pull those dependencies in and finish installing ceni
You might get an error when running ceni, telling the screen is to small. Maximize the terminal window and it should run fine.

[fab]

Many thx Ragupo to take time for helping me to find out a solution.
Yes firmware-realtek was installed and unfortunetely nothing was better...

Yesterday night, I recompiled kernel + modules, and update the .config, in order to select the RTL8188 as a module, as it was not checked by default, and it started to work! (of course firmware-realtek must be also installed)
(Kernel version is now 3.4.75).
So for me, it actually means that the debian stock version sold by Olimex is lacking the RTL8188 feature, which is nevertheless in their list of supported features!!!

Fab

[ragupo]

Weird. My card is Realtek RTL8188CUS. It worked with the latest olimex debian image, just added the firmware. But there are many subspecies of the 8188xxx.
Good to hear that you found a solution.