# r8712u fails at life

## alphis

So I bought an rtl8191su which apparently meant to be called r8712u since that is the only driver in the kernel that supports it (only wasted hours of my time). After discovering the staging drivers section to enable r8712u which is the only driver that supports my "rtl8191su" I now get an actual device in iwconfig! Yay. 

iwconfig wlan1 shows the usual information. (i have a shitty internal wlan0 which is why i added this USB based one)

ifconfig wlan1 works too

iw dev wlan1 info fails miserably with:

```
command failed: No such device (-19)
```

Anything with iw simply fails to acknowledge that this device exists. I cannot connect to my AP. I use wpa_supplicant with NO PROBLEM with

/etc/init.d/wpa_supplicant start

dhcpcd wlan0 <--- shitty internal card

works

if I replace dhcpcd wlan0 with dhcpcd wlan1 NOTHING HAPPENS.

no ip. 

nothing.

Clearly I am unable to connect for similar reasons as why I can't use iw. I just don't understand why iwconfig and ifconfig DO WORK. However I cannot use either of them to connect to my WPA AP.

The only interesting thing I notice about the module in lsmod is:

```
rtl8192ce              74061  0

rtlwifi                98723  1 rtl8192ce

rtl8192c_common        59553  1 rtl8192ce

mac80211              229034  3 rtlwifi,rtl8192c_common,rtl8192ce

cfg80211              187262  2 mac80211,rtlwifi
```

This is my shitty internal card's module. As you can see it is referenced by many other modules.

How about the new staging module that is needed to support my new usb wireless card.

```
r8712u                167793  0
```

All by itself. 

I have ZERO idea why any of this is the case. Any help is greatly appreciated as I've been waiting weeks for this thing to arrive due to poor wireless reception on my internal card and now that it is here its useless.

Spare me the reasons as to why the internal card is useless. My cellphone connects to my wifi with 100x better speed than my internal wireless laptop SITTING NEXT TO EACHOTHER. And they both are on the same DESK of the AP. The internal wireless card is garbage.

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## BradN

Well, the staging drivers are there for a reason, you're likely to run into problems with them, that's why they're not moved into the wireless area of the kernel.

If you can't get that to work, your options are: wait for newer/better drivers, return the USB and get a different one, or maybe even try the windows drivers with ndiswrapper.

Also if you need firmware, make sure it's downloaded and in place.  I've messed that up a couple times already.  Stuff in dmesg might mention this if that's the problem (check there anyway for error messages).

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## Gusar

iw uses netlink, but r8712u is a wext driver. So iw not working with it is normal and expected. wireless_tools will work, as will wpa_supplicant with -Dwext (instead of -Dnl80211)

BradN also makes a good point about firmware - so if you haven't yet, install the linux-firmware package.

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## alphis

Thanks very much for your replies. Of course I installed the firmware drivers.

I didn't know that wpa_supplicant -D[driver] existed and just assumed it worked on ALL wireless interfaces. Didn't know there are infinite wireless interfaces about.

Adding -Dwext has allowed me to use this card! It also forced me to see what params /etc/init.d/wpa_supplicant start was using and noticed something ELSE that I couldn't figure out.

It was using -iwlan0 instead of -iwlan1. 

Why does it do this? I assume it just looks at the first wlan[x] and uses this. 

I've fixed these items by adding to the /etc/conf.d/wpa_supplicant args variable "-Dwetc -iwlan1" and now I can see wpa_supplicant being started properly! 

Thanks again.

I have given up hope for using this card for packet injection/etc and will eventually just got a new laptop that doesn't whitelist their LOCKED DOWN bios and install a REAL wireless adapter (Atheros).

----------

