third party wifi

[rahlquist]

Has anyone gotten a 3rd party wifi adapter to work yet with Debian or Ubuntu? I have tried ad TPlink TL-W722N (AR9271 based) and a non name RT5370 based and despite pulling their respective firmware libraries from non-free I am not having much luck. I have to assume it is because neither the adapters modules are included? Any thoughts or insite?

[baryluk]

Check the /proc/config.gz file or /lib/modules/ dir, to check if the support is compiled into the kernel you are using. Often provided kernels do have a lot of stuff disabled to save space and compile time (but it is a pain to recompile stuff manually with things you want actually enabled). I would prefer more drivers to be compiled as modules, just like other distros (i.e. Debian, Ubuntu, etc), are doing. The kernel itself will not grow that much, and you can fit all the modules from the kernel in around 170MB or so of space.

---

Also, if it is USB, what dmesg is showing after you plug it in?

lsusb ?

[rahlquist]

Check the /proc/config.gz file or /lib/modules/ dir, to check if the support is compiled into the kernel you are using. Often provided kernels do have a lot of stuff disabled to save space and compile time (but it is a pain to recompile stuff manually with things you want actually enabled). I would prefer more drivers  to be compiled as modules, just like other distros (i.e. Debian, Ubuntu, etc), are doing. The kernel itself will not grow that much, and you can fit all the modules from the kernel in around 170MB or so of space.

---

Also, if it is USB, what dmesg is showing after you plug it in?

lsusb ?

Yeha its pretty much what I figured, not there. I have two I was playing with and both give mostly the same message on plugging in. 

[  167.116397] ehci_irq: highspeed device connect

[  167.338542] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using sunxi-ehci

lsudb will show the devices

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0cf3:9271 Atheros Communications, Inc. AR9271 802.11n

[baryluk]

On my kernel:

$ zgrep -i ath /proc/config.gz
CONFIG_BT_HCIUART_ATH3K=y
CONFIG_BT_ATH3K=m
CONFIG_UEVENT_HELPER_PATH="/sbin/hotplug"
# CONFIG_DM_MULTIPATH is not set
# CONFIG_ATH_CARDS is not set
CONFIG_SECURITY_PATH=y

so I guess, ar9271 will not work without building in some more modules. Ask longsleep to enable more modules, or build you own kernel from his sources.