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#1
LQ Newbie
Registered: May 2019
Distribution: Mint
Posts: 20
Rep:
WiFi Dongle Realtek - installation patient help required, sorry!
Hi, I have just bought a WiFi dongle for my laptop (because the internal broadcom card is not recognised) that is compatible with Linux(or so claimed). It comes with a text file that is i think the install script which when I run with bash it asks for authentication which I assume is my password and the installation fails due to authentication failure. The little cd that came with it has all sorts of other files and source code, I think, but given I know nothing about the ins an outs of installing stuff I am stuck. The date in some of the files is early 2010's so I am assuming the dongle is not brand new to the world!. when the dongle is put in the USB slot, Linux appears to take no action and does not tell me that a new USB device has been detected. I wonder if I had had it plugged in when I installed Linux (Mint, Cinnamon) it would have been detected and the right driver installed. Is there any way of getting Linux to look for it and find a driver? It's not listed in the driver manager app when I run it. Or should I look for a file type or extension on the disk that i should use other than the script? No clear instructions came with it, just badly written chinese/english by the look of it. Many thanks if you can help the poor old noob!
#2
LQ Veteran
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Australia
Distribution: Lots ...
Posts: 21,126
A continuation of your previous thread.
1 members found this post helpful.
#3
LQ Newbie
Registered: May 2019
Distribution: Mint
Posts: 20
Original Poster
Rep:
Ok, sorry if you think the text was waffle, but it was an attempt to set the scene. If there was a simple command to force Linux to detect USB devices, then huge swathes of text would be unnecessary, possibly. I need to do some digging because the box has no make or model listed (Realtek appeared in one file on the disk), its that bad a device. leave it at this until i can capture and copy text following the failures.
#4
LQ Veteran
Registered: Jan 2008
Location: florida panhandle
Distribution: Slackware Debian, Fedora, others
Posts: 7,346
after booting into your system, plug in the wifi dongle, open a terminal and post the ouput of the following
Code:
sudo dmesg |tail -10
#5
LQ Guru
Registered: Mar 2016
Location: Harrow, UK
Distribution: LFS, AntiX, Slackware
Posts: 7,573
When you install software you must do so as root. In Mint, that would mean using sudo with your password. When you ran the installation script, did you preface it with sudo? Giving us the script in [code][/code] tags would be helpful too.
#6
LQ Guru
Registered: Jan 2006
Location: Virginia, USA
Distribution: Slackware, Ubuntu MATE, Mageia, and whatever VMs I happen to be playing with
Posts: 19,324
It may well be easier to get the Broadcom wireless chipset working than to get the USB dongle working. Manufacturers of USB dongles often provide spotty support of Linux at best. A web search for "Linux Mint [version number] Broadcom" should turn up a number of articles. When I needed a USB dongle, I got one from ThinkPenguin.com, which sells native Linux computers and accessories.
#7
LQ Newbie
Registered: May 2019
Distribution: Mint
Posts: 20
Original Poster
Rep:
Ok, many thanks for the help. I am still trying to establish the actual product details (its a brandless USB 2.0 802.11N made for windows 7 ). The Sudo command before the script was the authentication problem. Thanks I would never have thought of that, now I know.
#8
LQ Newbie
Registered: May 2019
Distribution: Mint
Posts: 20
Original Poster
Rep:
Quote:
Originally Posted by
frankbell
It may well be easier to get the Broadcom wireless chipset working than to get the USB dongle working. Manufacturers of USB dongles often provide spotty support of Linux at best. A web search for "Linux Mint [version number] Broadcom" should turn up a number of articles. When I needed a USB dongle, I got one from ThinkPenguin.com, which sells native Linux computers and accessories.
I'll have another look online. There are several 'solutions' posted but the ones I have tried did not work. thanks for the much needed push to persevere!
#9
LQ Newbie
Registered: May 2019
Distribution: Mint
Posts: 20
Original Poster
Rep:
Many thanks to all. I re tried one of the solutions to get the broadcom working, and this time it worked. So problem solved. Thanks all
#10
LQ Veteran
Registered: Aug 2003
Location: Australia
Distribution: Lots ...
Posts: 21,126
Excellent.
As regards the Realtek chip, the same sort of thing applies - but in that case you needs to determine the exact chipset and find a driver for it. Ignore the shipped driver - that was created years ago, and never updated for the changes made to the linux kernel. For my TP-Link devices I go to github where members of the community have picked up the code and adapted it so it works. If you're lucky (as I was) the performance is better using the community code.
You should be able to get more detail on the dongle by plugging it in and running this.
Code:
lsusb -vv | grep -A 10 -i Network
#11
LQ Newbie
Registered: May 2019
Distribution: Mint
Posts: 20
Original Poster
Rep:
Thanks.
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