Wifi Adapter + RPI help

Nov 19, 2013 4 Replies
R

Hi All,



currently have the following setup:



Raspberry Pi model B (running Raspbian wheezy under berryboot) netgear WN111v2 wifi adapter



Ive googled thoroughly on how to setup this adapter, but while 50% say they had no success on setting up and using this adapter, there is the other half that have successfully gotten this adapter setup and running, albeit no straight forward instructions on how they did it.



Things ive gathered is that the adapter is a Atheros chipset (ar9170), and need the driver/firmware of carl9170.



Being a total newbie on Linux, I would appreciate if some of you can give me a hand on how to get this setup.


  1. how do I get the latest firmware for this adapter to my raspberry? lx terminal or do I go into 'startx' and download it from there (I have Ethernet connection) using the web browser? if I d/load it using the latter will it install automatically or do I need to point it where to install?


  1. some exact instructions on configuration is also appreciated.



Any help would be appreciated.


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T

From a gui you can probably use e.g. synaptic which is simply a front-end for apt-get [install] etc.

usually that is all you need to do as the package structure itself takes care of everything else.

Which with firmware consist in I think dropping it in the right place and possibly adding an entry on a list of available firmware. Never had to did that deep tho.

Just find the right package and install it.

with firmware there is no configuration I know of.

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A

Plug the adaptor in and power up the Pi. Log in and type dmesg. If drivers for the device are in Debian and it needs firmware the last dozen or so lines of output should tell you. Google for the firmware (a .fw file) and copy it to the directory /lib/firmware. Reboot and type dmesg again to check it has found the firmware.

dmesg is your friend.

Another Dave

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W

Something that has helped me in the past is this:

On a different Linux machine/distro which *does* recognise some device, boot without plugging in aforesaid device and do 'dmesg > /tmp/stuff-1'

Then plug in the device and do 'dmesg > /tmp/stuff-2'

Now 'diff /tmp/stuff-1 /tmp/stuff-2' will likely show you what changed.

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W

And, as I forgot to add, doing the same with lsmod instead of dmesg in order to quickly see what modules were loaded.

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