Has anyone had any luck with plug-in usb wireless adapters with lenny

mrj · 07-29-2009, 05:18 PM

Since I can't seem to get the internal wifi adapter to work on my laptop, I would like to try a usb plug-in adapter. Has anyone had any luck with one of these with lenny?

rerushg · 07-29-2009, 06:50 PM

Sure. With my various boxes I've used both PCI and USB devices. All are working.
Don't forget: You've got to have the firmware for your device.

mrj · 07-30-2009, 03:23 PM

What wireless adapter did you use (manufacturer and model), and where did you get the drivers (if the linux kernel doesn't have them)? Thanks for the response.

rerushg · 07-30-2009, 10:35 PM

Mine is (from lsusb): Linksys WUSB54GC 802.11g Adapter [ralink rt73]

The kernel has the necessary driver but you still need the firmware which is "firmware-ralink" available from the backports repo.

hkoster1 · 07-31-2009, 05:28 AM

The OP's problem will not be solved by using an external WiFi adapter, since (judging from his earlier thread) the problem appears to be one of configuring an existing wireless interface (Atheros -> ath5k -> wlan0) to work with WPA. If (gnome-)network-manager won't work (and it often doesn't), then he could try Wicd (it's in lenny-backports and in current testing/Sid).

tredegar · 07-31-2009, 11:33 AM

No need for extra hardware, and USB dongles are a pain.

I'll second wicd and you can easily get it here

And uninstall the wretched "Network Manager"