Wifi driver

GardarS · 12-14-2008, 06:23 PM

Hello I'm a bit newish when it comes to wifi thingy's on linux, and I was wondering I have an onboard wifi card 802.11b/g and I've heard that from a few that it's fairly easy to find a driver for it, but me I've found a few drivers but usually it's for an usb device and such, I was wondering if any of you had found a suitable driver for an onboard card.

It's an Asus p5k premium board if that helps

Simon Bridge · 12-14-2008, 06:36 PM

To discover drivers in linux, you need to get hold of the chipset that your card uses. Manufacturers designation is seldom any help. The P5K is a family of Mobos - we need to know which one you have for the info to be any use. However, there is a faster way:

For an onboard card, open a terminal and enter

lspci

this will output a lot of info. Look for a line that mentions wireless and copy that here.

A great many wireless drivers are already installed in linux.
However, there are also lots which only have windows drivers, so require special configuration and third-party wrappers.

GardarS · 12-14-2008, 06:47 PM

it's the black perl edition the chipset I find on the motherboard is P35 but if you're referring to the chipset of the card I'm not able to find it in the manual nor on the asus site.

Code:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express DRAM Controller (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82G33/G31/P35/P31 Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 02)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 02)
00:1a.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #6 (rev 02)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 02)
00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) PCI Express Port 6 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev 92)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801IR (ICH9R) LPC Interface Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801IR/IO/IH (ICH9R/DO/DH) 4 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801I (ICH9 Family) 2 port SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8600 GTS (rev a1)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
03:00.0 SATA controller: JMicron Technologies, Inc. JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI Controller (rev 03)
03:00.1 IDE interface: JMicron Technologies, Inc. JMicron 20360/20363 AHCI Controller (rev 03)
05:03.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Agere Systems FW323 (rev 70)
05:04.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8110SC/8169SC Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)

and this is my lspci output and there's no sign of my wifi card there it seems.

Simon Bridge · 12-14-2008, 07:23 PM

Hmmm... looks like you don't have one - or - your card's ROM is not telling anyone about it. It is also possible that it is disabled in the BIOS, which is common. What does the little booklet tell you about the wifi card? Can you find an example of your mobo online and post a link to it?

The mobo is an intel ICH9 chipset - generally, with other manufacturers chips in some locations to trip you up. The JMicron controllers are a bad sign. You are either running SATA in legacy mode or using the proprietary drivers. There used to be lots of trouble with these.

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation GeForce 8600 GTS (rev a1)
... you gfx card says it is GeForce 8600 ... not the 8800 in your sig.

02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. 88E8056 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 12)
05:04.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8110SC/8169SC Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)
... you have two ethernet ports?

Those are Marvel 88E8056 and RTL-8110 chipsets respectively. With luck your wireless is also realtek... or intel.

If you cannot detect your card you cannot use it.
Check BIOS.
Check with the vendor that your version of the mobo is the one with wifi onboard.

You can try the command

lshw

and see what you find.

lshw | grep -A 2 -B 10 wireless

may be more immediately useful.

GardarS · 12-14-2008, 09:03 PM

Here's a link to my motherboard

http://www.asus.com/products.aspx?l1...49&modelmenu=1

The card is enabled in the BIOS, it's a bit wierd that it doesn't want anyone to know of it's existance, would be really nice to be rid of that 10m long cord streching over my living room.

Oh and my mistake in the sig, thanks for noticing

Simon Bridge · 12-14-2008, 09:51 PM

http://secure.ncix.com/products/prod...l.php?id=88807
... users are blacklisting the wifi card!

However...
It seems that this is a realtek chipset, but you need the Asus Wifi AP-Solo drivers from the Realtek website.

Gentoo Wiki has an entry:
http://mint.gentoo-wiki.com/Asus_P5N...m/Wifi-AP_Solo
... not working when I tried just now. May be OK later.

GardarS · 12-14-2008, 09:57 PM

Thank you, will give it a try