Re: RealTek RTL8192EU drivers
On Fri, 2015-10-30 at 07:04 -0400, Stephen Powell wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Oct 2015 15:43:51 -0400 (EDT), Jose Martinez wrote:
> >
> > I sure appreciate the info. The internal B43 wireless on my laptop does
> > not play nicely with the b43legacy driver and locks up fairly
> > frequently, and has limited data rates. (the b43 driver doesn't work at
> > all). This seems to be a pretty common problem, as I've run across it
> > mentioned on several sites. So, I thought I'd get something that was
> > less problematic.....alas and alack the solution seems to have its own
> > issues!!
>
> In Debian, the driver and the firmware are separate. Make sure you have
> the firmware installed also. Usually, you can detect missing firmware
> with
>
> dmesg|less
>
> and search for the string "firmware" (without the quotes). See if there
> are any error messages regarding the attempt to load firmware. You will
> need Debian package firmware-b43legacy-installer or firmware-b43-installer,
> depending on which chipset is built in. firmware-b43legacy-installer is
> needed for chipsets BCM4301, BCM4306/2, or BCM4306.
>
> firmware-b43-installer is used for chipets BCM4306/3, BCM4311, BCM4318,
> BCM4321, BCM4322 (only 14e4:432b), or BCM4312 (with Low-Power a.k.a. LP-PHY).
>
> Make sure that you have the contrib and the non-free sections of the
> archive enabled in /etc/apt/sources.list, as this involves non-free stuff.
>
I have all the b43 packages installed, the b43legacy driver (which is
apparently now main-line, though it wasn't when I installed it) and the
firmware package (via the fwcutter package). The legacy Broadcom B4306
I have does work with these packages most of the time. However, the
data rates are extremely slow, and on occasion, the transmitter
completely drops out. I've looked at the kernel error messages that
result when this happens, and it involves receiving unexpected values.
Usually multiple times, until it simply gives up. When this happens, I
can usually turn the interface off and back on again and it will connect
back up and be fine for a while. Sometimes that does not work, and I
modprobe -r the b43legacy driver and then re-load the driver and it will
come up. On rare occasion, even that won't work, and I have to
completely reboot the system.
I got tired of that situation and bought the RealTek USB WIFI, which is
now working and making life a whole lot easier!! :)
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