USB Wifi Dongle
#11
(05-03-2016, 05:35 AM)rahlquist Wrote:
(05-03-2016, 04:07 AM)Luke Wrote:
(05-02-2016, 05:06 AM)tkaiser Wrote:
(05-02-2016, 04:28 AM)Luke Wrote: he is thinking about / working on a kernel that will have support for some of the popular wifi adapters. The support will be there in a couple of months I bet.

Really? Someone is working on a kernel? I know someone: longsleep. Here's the last commit: https://github.com/longsleep/linux-pine6...520140725d

So this has already been done. Now it's time to figure out how to get support for the now supported WiFi dongles in already existing OS images. It's easy, I posted that already ten times in the forums so won't do it any more. Ask the Pine64 guys why such essential information is missing from the download pages.

I simply don't get why your comments are frequently so spiteful or/and cynical? But your tone is besides the point  - baryluk and many others are using longsleeps github. baryluk said something about creating a 'fat' kernel (presumably based on longsleeps work) that will, in all likelihood, support many more devices --- including different WiFi dongles.
How about a team effort. This is what tkaiser (if I may be so bold as to suggest I understand him a bit) and I both seem to be trying to get across that so many dont seem to get yet. The OS on the pine is in its infancy. It does no good to have 3 different kernels floating out there with users who cant even report bugs based on the latest one. All you are going to do is increase the worthless noise in the forum until it totally drowns out anything productive. It would be a lot better to have a team effort until this thing stabilizes, we would likely cover a lot more ground and get more done. Or we can have 5 people all building their own kernel fixing the same bugs at the same time. 

That says nothing about barylurk, his abilities or his goal. If he is competent, and can produce something worthwhile then by all means go for it. One STRONG suggestion tho, maintain full control of output, delete all publicly available old versions as the new ones come out, to help eliminate the issues we have now where someone manages to dig up the oldest possible version of code. 

tkaiser has a good point, over and over we are posting answers to questions and FFS the mods are doing little to NOTHING to sticky important information. Every sub forum should have a similar or linked sticky with the most common questions. How many button threads do we have to have? Hmm? How many external HD wont spin up threads?  (I stand corrected there are more stickies than I last saw, thank you mods) 

A definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. So if tones around here get a little short its likely because the people who are willing to help are getting sick of hearing the same questions over and over. Of watching a user who refuses to take proper troubleshooting steps to rule out thing like bad power or fake SD. How many times to we have to explain that while your Brand X smart phone charger is nice, hooking it to the Pine is useless because the power connection on the Pine units is full on Stupid. It wont tell your smart charger to release the current it needs. Or asserting "I know my SD card is real cause I bought it at Walmart/Amazon/Best  Buy and paid $90 for a 8GB SD card that says Samsung on it!" Ebay FFS has a whole page devoted to finding fake SD cards. And guess what kiddies, fakes make it into every damn retailer out there. They almost all purchase through intermediate sellers(middle men) who get their supplies from who knows where. It is the same way fake medications that look real but are 100% plaster make it into drug stores even in the good ol USA. 

As for the immediate subject, did you go look at the huge number of wifi adapters that longsleep recently added? It's just a matter of time till he releases a new kernel with them in it. Thats why I lined out everything in my post a few back.

And Luke I appreciate the effort you put into getting the irc server together, even though as I pointed out there was already a channel before that.

rahlquist,

Let me start by saying that nothing of what you've written explains or warrants rude behaviour. I have seen many of tkeiser's posts, some of which corrected me and others (and I have no issue with admitting that he was correct) and were written in a condescending way. What good does this do ? - the logic escapes me. If a problem has been solved then point them to the solution; if the problem hasn't been solved point them to where it is discussed. 

Now I am not a programmer, I'm a medical doctor and an electronics/ tinkering enthusiast. I cannot, unfortunately, contribute in a meaningful way to the actual development of software and I bet that the majority of people on this forum are just like me in this respect. I have witnessed, however, exchanges of information between people who can and do contribute in a meaningful way. And things are progressing because of their hard work, and not only on the software --- just look at lennyraposo's bug-reporting / resource website, its a thing of beauty ! (and I'm sure that it will aid cooperation considerably if used right). As a side-note, I believe this is where users will get their images from in the future, so the problem with old and problem-riddled versions of software should die out.   

Regrading restructuring the forums -  I believe that recently there was an attempt to clean up the forums but I agree with you that some work is still needed to make things transparent over here. I do believe that the reason why you are seeing many instances of the same questions is because it is relatively hard to find the right thread. Its early days, I am confident this will get solved sooner or later.  

Lastly, of course some people do not understand the nature of the issues they encounter; just earlier, on a different thread I wrote "(...) I believe that the real problem is that people do not understand what they are buying --- or in this case bought. These boards, at this stage in time, are essentially development kits. They are aimed at devs and enthusiasts - hence people who really understand what a Beta-build means and understand that certain things will not work right out of the box(for a while in some instances). This isn't a phone you buy in a store or a set-top box for watching media; this is a platform for development and tinkering." 

I will look into what longsleep posted, thank you for brining it to my attention. I just wanted to assure the OP that support for third-party wifi dongles will be there eventually.

Re the IRC channel: 1) that Freenode IRC channel was a zombie-town; 2) it gave me something to do with my second Pine64. Do you think I did something wrong, or do you really appreciate the effort?

Cheers, 

Luke 
You can find me on IRC, Discord and Twitter


  Reply
#12
(05-03-2016, 09:54 AM)Luke Wrote: rahlquist,

Let me start by saying that nothing of what you've written explains or warrants rude behaviour. I have seen many of tkeiser's posts, some of which corrected me and others (and I have no issue with admitting that he was correct) and were written in a condescending way. What good does this do ? - the logic escapes me. If a problem has been solved then point them to the solution; if the problem hasn't been solved point them to where it is discussed. 

Now I am not a programmer, I'm a medical doctor and an electronics/ tinkering enthusiast. I cannot, unfortunately, contribute in a meaningful way to the actual development of software and I bet that the majority of people on this forum are just like me in this respect. I have witnessed, however, exchanges of information between people who can and do contribute in a meaningful way. And things are progressing because of their hard work, and not only on the software --- just look at lennyraposo's bug-reporting / resource website, its a thing of beauty ! (and I'm sure that it will aid cooperation considerably if used right). As a side-note, I believe this is where users will get their images from in the future, so the problem with old and problem-riddled versions of software should die out.   

Regrading restructuring the forums -  I believe that recently there was an attempt to clean up the forums but I agree with you that some work is still needed to make things transparent over here. I do believe that the reason why you are seeing many instances of the same questions is because it is relatively hard to find the right thread. Its early days, I am confident this will get solved sooner or later.  

Lastly, of course some people do not understand the nature of the issues they encounter; just earlier, on a different thread I wrote "(...) I believe that the real problem is that people do not understand what they are buying --- or in this case bought. These boards, at this stage in time, are essentially development kits. They are aimed at devs and enthusiasts - hence people who really understand what a Beta-build means and understand that certain things will not work right out of the box(for a while in some instances). This isn't a phone you buy in a store or a set-top box for watching media; this is a platform for development and tinkering." 

I will look into what longsleep posted, thank you for brining it to my attention. I just wanted to assure the OP that support for third-party wifi dongles will be there eventually.

Re the IRC channel: 1) that Freenode IRC channel was a zombie-town; 2) it gave me something to do with my second Pine64. Do you think I did something wrong, or do you really appreciate the effort?

Cheers, 

Luke 
Some people are naturally sweet others are not. Some get made not to be. Ive see both sides of the fence and while being short or abrupt or snitty to some may be just how they are I understand to others that could be offensive. I've been the n00b user on more than one occasion (omg asking questions about sendmail in 2003 I will never forget how rude that community was). That said I also understand, having worked in desktop support for a time, how annoying it can be when someone asks for help then proceeds to tell you that you are wrong about the possible causation. So there are merits on both side. I've learned over the years to distance myself and dont let people get to me. Tkaiser may not be Mary Poppins but if you pay attention to what he says there is lots of knowledge to be gathered even if you have to duck a few rocks. Hell even I get terse at times. I know language can be a barrier and trust me I know geography can be one too more than most would realize. 

The documentation and forums are what they are. The sad part is that Tkaiser has gotten to repeat himself over and over about some things. Proactive forum management would have seen the second time he posted a gripe about old OS's for example, gone to the wiki, moved all the old images to an archive area with a warning to not requests support for them as they are outdated and no longer supported. 

As to people not understanding, yes and I knew this would be an issue with the project. The marketing was too shiny, it even had me believing and I know better. 

As for your irc efforts, bottom line to me is this, we have a product, lets rename the product Pool. We all have buckets. If we all work together to fill the pool it will be done faster. If we all put up our own pool, our own support sites, our own subreddits, our own groups on other support sites like stack exchange and experts exchange etc what we will get is a bunch of pools that fill much more slowly, with much duplicated effort.  I dont have a problem with what you did. You are free to do as you choose.
  Reply
#13
(05-03-2016, 11:33 AM)rahlquist Wrote:
(05-03-2016, 09:54 AM)Luke Wrote: rahlquist,

Let me start by saying that nothing of what you've written explains or warrants rude behaviour. I have seen many of tkeiser's posts, some of which corrected me and others (and I have no issue with admitting that he was correct) and were written in a condescending way. What good does this do ? - the logic escapes me. If a problem has been solved then point them to the solution; if the problem hasn't been solved point them to where it is discussed. 

Now I am not a programmer, I'm a medical doctor and an electronics/ tinkering enthusiast. I cannot, unfortunately, contribute in a meaningful way to the actual development of software and I bet that the majority of people on this forum are just like me in this respect. I have witnessed, however, exchanges of information between people who can and do contribute in a meaningful way. And things are progressing because of their hard work, and not only on the software --- just look at lennyraposo's bug-reporting / resource website, its a thing of beauty ! (and I'm sure that it will aid cooperation considerably if used right). As a side-note, I believe this is where users will get their images from in the future, so the problem with old and problem-riddled versions of software should die out.   

Regrading restructuring the forums -  I believe that recently there was an attempt to clean up the forums but I agree with you that some work is still needed to make things transparent over here. I do believe that the reason why you are seeing many instances of the same questions is because it is relatively hard to find the right thread. Its early days, I am confident this will get solved sooner or later.  

Lastly, of course some people do not understand the nature of the issues they encounter; just earlier, on a different thread I wrote "(...) I believe that the real problem is that people do not understand what they are buying --- or in this case bought. These boards, at this stage in time, are essentially development kits. They are aimed at devs and enthusiasts - hence people who really understand what a Beta-build means and understand that certain things will not work right out of the box(for a while in some instances). This isn't a phone you buy in a store or a set-top box for watching media; this is a platform for development and tinkering." 

I will look into what longsleep posted, thank you for brining it to my attention. I just wanted to assure the OP that support for third-party wifi dongles will be there eventually.

Re the IRC channel: 1) that Freenode IRC channel was a zombie-town; 2) it gave me something to do with my second Pine64. Do you think I did something wrong, or do you really appreciate the effort?

Cheers, 

Luke 
Some people are naturally sweet others are not. Some get made not to be. Ive see both sides of the fence and while being short or abrupt or snitty to some may be just how they are I understand to others that could be offensive. I've been the n00b user on more than one occasion (omg asking questions about sendmail in 2003 I will never forget how rude that community was). That said I also understand, having worked in desktop support for a time, how annoying it can be when someone asks for help then proceeds to tell you that you are wrong about the possible causation. So there are merits on both side. I've learned over the years to distance myself and dont let people get to me. Tkaiser may not be Mary Poppins but if you pay attention to what he says there is lots of knowledge to be gathered even if you have to duck a few rocks. Hell even I get terse at times. I know language can be a barrier and trust me I know geography can be one too more than most would realize. 

The documentation and forums are what they are. The sad part is that Tkaiser has gotten to repeat himself over and over about some things. Proactive forum management would have seen the second time he posted a gripe about old OS's for example, gone to the wiki, moved all the old images to an archive area with a warning to not requests support for them as they are outdated and no longer supported. 

As to people not understanding, yes and I knew this would be an issue with the project. The marketing was too shiny, it even had me believing and I know better. 

As for your irc efforts, bottom line to me is this, we have a product, lets rename the product Pool. We all have buckets. If we all work together to fill the pool it will be done faster. If we all put up our own pool, our own support sites, our own subreddits, our own groups on other support sites like stack exchange and experts exchange etc what we will get is a bunch of pools that fill much more slowly, with much duplicated effort.  I dont have a problem with what you did. You are free to do as you choose.

I'll just comment on the last thing you wrote about IRC. I don't think that it splinters or detracts from the community on the forum. Not in the slightest. In fact, if anything, over the past week (or so) that the server has been up I have witnessed quite the opposite. If anything I would call it 'complimentary'. 

@XFSmiles sorry for having this exchange under your original post. 
 XFSmiles
You can find me on IRC, Discord and Twitter


  Reply
#14
I have the following problem, ever since I got my pine64 - I have no Internet on it, which makes it pretty useless. I have 3 wifi dongles, which work on every other device, incl. raspberry pis, but not on pine64. Today I got myself the last ubuntu mate release to see if the problem is fixed, but it is apparently not. It would be a huge help to me if someone can suggest a practical solution to the problem, which can help me without much effort to have the Internet on my device.
  Reply
#15
Insert your wifi dongle and do a dmesg.
Depending on which chipset the dongle is using, you may install a package with drivers to activate it.

I have tested the PineA64 with several different dongles (Broadcom, Realtek and RALink), and all but one (some strange Atheros-based clone that fell off a lorry in Thailand) have worked as intended after I installed the driverpackage and replugged the dongle.

Here's a little something from teh internet:
https://wiki.debian.org/WiFi
  Reply
#16
Yeah it's probably just a matter of enabling the driver in the kernel build, put it into a laptop or other devices where it works, do an 'lsmod' and tell us which driver it is. I can create a pull request for you then for longsleep to include it.
Come have a chat in the Pine IRC channel >>
  Reply
#17
I have 3 dongles, so here is the info that I've gathered using dmesg and lsmod:
The first two use the following:
Realtek
rtl8192cu
firmware rtlwifi/rtl8192cufw_TMSC.bin

Modules:
rtl8xxxu
rtl8192cu
rtl_usb
rtl8192c_common
rtlwifi
mac80211

and the third uses this firmware:
RTL8191S
Realtek
firmware rtlwifi/rtl8712u.bin

And the above mentioned Modules and also this one:
r8712u
  Reply
#18
(01-11-2017, 12:34 PM)pres Wrote: I have 3 dongles, so here is the info that I've gathered using dmesg and lsmod:
The first two use the following:
Realtek
rtl8192cu
firmware rtlwifi/rtl8192cufw_TMSC.bin

Modules:
rtl8xxxu
rtl8192cu
rtl_usb
rtl8192c_common
rtlwifi
mac80211

and the third uses this firmware:
RTL8191S
Realtek
firmware rtlwifi/rtl8712u.bin

And the above mentioned Modules and also this one:
r8712u

Unplug your dongle, open a terminal windows, then type


Code:
sudo apt-get install realtek-firmware

Replug your dongle and see if it works.
  Reply
#19
Code:
$ sudo apt-get install realtek-firmware

This should work on a Debian system, and to be precise firmware-realtek is the name of the package according to this stackexchange post.
However since I'm running ubuntu xenial, adding non-free to the sources list didn't help, but this lines did the work:

Code:
$ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hanipouspilot/rtlwifi
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install rtlwifi-new-dkms linux-firmware
Source


After that the dongle showed MAC Address, which was a huge step forward, but just clicking on the network and entering my network key didn't do the work. I went on and deleted the Ethernet connection and added the network manually and voila - I was on THE Internet.

It would be a huge help if this gets fixed soon, wifi network is a main feature which should work after a fresh sysem install.

Thanks for your help anyway, I hope my post helps others that encounter the same issue.
  Reply


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