Recommendation on (cheap nano/mini) usb wireless adapter

[grayman4hire]

Hello,

Wondering if someone can make a recommendation on a usb wireless adapter?

I'm looking for something that is plug and play. I don't want to download and compile stuff myself if I don't have to.

Will the AirLink AWLL5099 work? Looks to be using realtek 8188CUS chip.
http://www.amazon.com/Airlink-compatibl ... roduct_top

Found this thread. Does the last comment mean the drivers are now built into the kernel, hence plug and play? Thanks
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3186&start=10

[pepedog]

That's for raspberrypi only. No.

[Sinatics]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('grayman4hire', 'H')ello,

Wondering if someone can make a recommendation on a usb wireless adapter?

I'm looking for something that is plug and play. I don't want to download and compile stuff myself if I don't have to.

Will the AirLink AWLL5099 work? Looks to be using realtek 8188CUS chip.
http://www.amazon.com/Airlink-compatibl ... roduct_top

Found this thread. Does the last comment mean the drivers are now built into the kernel, hence plug and play? Thanks
viewtopic.php?f=6&t=3186&start=10

[grayman4hire]

Thanks for the clarification.

I am familiar with an Ethernet bridge, but that's pretty much the opposite of nano/mini

Any other recommendations? Thanks

[grayman4hire]

FYI - I ended up picking up the "Airlink101 AWLL5099 Wireless N 150 Ultra Mini USB Adapter" and my E02 PogoPlug had no issues detecting it and loaded up the drivers.

I'm still working on getting the wireless configured though - not an easy task.

[mlitke]

This thread is a bit old, so you likely already have wireless configured and up and running. If not, you may want to try out wicd, the package appears to be in the Arch Linux ARM package repository. It has an ncurses interface, which makes it pretty straight forward to get wireless up and running quickly.

I have also been looking for a mini/nano style USB wireless adapter for the pogo-type devices, so thanks for posting.

[grayman4hire]

Old? It's like 2 days since my last response

I actually haven't gotten wireless working (consistently) yet. Not exactly sure what the issue is, but I'm close.

I took a quick look at wicd. Looks like I need to "disable any existing network management services" first before enabling wicd. I'm running headless, how is that going to work? I would hate to lose my ability to fallback on my wired connection while trying to get my wireless up and running.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mlitke', 'T')his thread is a bit old, so you likely already have wireless configured and up and running. If not, you may want to try out wicd, the package appears to be in the Arch Linux ARM package repository. It has an ncurses interface, which makes it pretty straight forward to get wireless up and running quickly.

I have also been looking for a mini/nano style USB wireless adapter for the pogo-type devices, so thanks for posting.

[mlitke]

Whoops, I was looking at the date of the original post, which is a little bit old, but I guess not that old either.

You make a good point. I have a serial connection and forget sometimes that others may not. I would have to play around a bit to see if there is a way go get wicd up and running before disabling the existing network management and do all the setup changes through ssh.

I assume you do not have a serial connection?

[mlitke]

I was able to do some testing, and got wicd up and running for the wired connection over ssh. The Arch Linux ARM install I used for testing is based on ArchLinuxARM-2012.11-armv5te-rootfs.tar.gz (current as of 2012.12.12) and does not have a great deal of modifications. The device I used for testing is a GoFlex Home. I appears the default service for networking is netcfg. Once the device is up and I ssh in, if I check which services are running (> systemctl -t service), the netcfg service is listed as loaded, active and exited. So, it appears netcfg gets the wired connection up and exits. With that knowledge, I ran the following steps to switch the networking services to wicd:

1. Install wicd:
> pacman -S wicd
2. Disable the netcfg service:
> systemctl disable netcfg.service
3. Enable the wicd service:
> systemctl enable wicd.service
4. Start the wicd service:
> systemctl start wicd.service
5. Configure your wired interface in wicd:
> wicd-curses (starts a text based configuration interface)
5a. Type 'P' to configure preferences
5b. Ensure the "Wired Interface" setting is set to your wired interface (ie: eth0)
5c. Select the "Always switch to wired connection when available" setting
5d. Type 'F10' to save and return to the main screen
5e. Type 'Q' to exit
6. Reboot the device
7. Once the device is back up and running, you should be able to connect via ssh
8. ssh to the device
9. Check that the wicd service is running and netcfg is not:
> systemctl -t service

You should now be able to run wicd-curses and configure your wireless device. I tried to setup wireless with an old USB wifi device I had (Netgear WG111v2), but I kept getting a kernel panic (which I believe is unrelated to wicd). It is the only USB wifi device I currently have, so I have not yet done more testing.

If you are unable to connect after enabling wicd, you can always pull the drive with the root file system and update the systemd symbolic links to disable wicd and enable netcfg again. Let me know if you would like me to post the steps on how to do that.

[grayman4hire]

Thanks @mlitke for the instructions to enable wicd!

I'm going to give it a try and report back. If you don't mind, can you post the instructions on disabling wicd and reverting back in case I run into issues?

Thanks again.