Realteak 8192cu wifi confusion

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Realteak 8192cu wifi confusion

Postby ijanos » Sun Jan 25, 2015 10:28 pm

Hi!

The 8192cu driver is now part of the linux kernel package
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', 'pacman -Qo /lib/modules/3.18.3-1-ARCH/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtl8192cu/8192cu.ko.gz
/usr/lib/modules/3.18.3-1-ARCH/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtl8192cu/8192cu.ko.gz is owned by linux-raspberrypi 3.18.3-1
')
This module was previously available in the alarm/dkms-8192cu package, which is still in the alarm repository.

There is (was?) an another module called rtl8192cu which is now missing.
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', ' modprobe rtl8192cu
modprobe: FATAL: Module rtl8192cu not found.')

I googled for a bit and it did not find when and why the switch was made. I think rtl8292cu was available in kernel 3.18.0.

Does somebody know what happaned?
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Re: Realteak 8192cu wifi confusion

Postby crashmaster » Mon Jan 26, 2015 2:21 am

I agree, but don't ask me why we have 8192cu again and not rtl8192cu. Maybe it has to do with firmware license problems i heard of.

In principal both work but the 8192cu needs the deprecated "wext" device for wpa-supplicant instead of nl80211. Otherwise my wlan fails and "iw" doesn't work correctly.

But you can't have both modules in the same kernel at the same time.
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Re: Realteak 8192cu wifi confusion

Postby moonman » Wed Jan 28, 2015 9:19 am

8192cu = out of tree driver provided by realtek and included by raspberrypi foundation
rtl8192cu = in-tree driver. Disable by raspberrypi foundation in favour of the one above.

The 8192cu (realtek) was excluded from rpi foundation sources in 3.17 and later kernel. Prior to that I had a patch in linux-raspberrypi-latest which disabled 8192cu and enabled rtl8192cu back. I see now since they made 3.18 their main kernel they have repatched this out-of-tree driver back in.

Personally I have no problem making rtl8192cu the 'main' driver since we already have a dkms package for the 8192cu driver. The only concern I have is if people will start complaining...
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Re: Realteak 8192cu wifi confusion

Postby crashmaster » Fri Jan 30, 2015 12:08 am

Thanks moonman for the particular description.

I think for rpi foundation the reason to stay with 8192cu is that this module has a lot of params for adjustments, at least to switch off the power save mode which seems to be problematic in some cases.

So far for me it's not that big problem to work with the 'out-of-tree' thing.
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Re: Realteak 8192cu wifi confusion

Postby ijanos » Fri Jan 30, 2015 9:58 pm

Thanks for the replies. Yes, I noticed that the in-tree driver can lose packages pretty badly, but it was/is getting better with every new kernel release.

I'm fine with 8192cu being the default, it works better anyways, it was just a little confusing that the pi booted without wifi after a kernel update.
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Re: Realteak 8192cu wifi confusion

Postby maggie2 » Sat Mar 21, 2015 1:20 am

I too have this problem with my USB wifi that uses this driver:
$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '
# wpa_supplicant -B -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/example.conf
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
nl80211: Driver does not support authentication/association or connect commands
wlan0: Failed to initialize driver interface
')

So the solution is to use the dkms-8192cu package? Is it possible that we can have this driver included in the kernel package? It has been 10 minutes now of installing this package, and the CPU is @ 100 % building the driver.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_code('', '# pacman -S dkms-8192cu
resolving dependencies...
looking for conflicting packages...

Packages (3) dkms-2.2.0.3-15 linux-raspberrypi-headers-3.18.9-2 dkms-8192cu-v4.0.2_9000.20130911-2

Total Download Size: 6.64 MiB
Total Installed Size: 44.01 MiB

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n]
:: Retrieving packages ...
dkms-2.2.0.3-15-any 48.3 KiB 0.00B/s 00:00 [############################################] 100%
(3/3) checking keys in keyring [############################################] 100%
(3/3) checking package integrity [############################################] 100%
(3/3) loading package files [############################################] 100%
(3/3) checking for file conflicts [############################################] 100%
(3/3) checking available disk space [############################################] 100%
(1/3) installing dkms [############################################] 100%
Optional dependencies for dkms
linux-headers: build modules against Arch kernel
linux-lts-headers: build modules against LTS Arch kernel
(2/3) installing linux-raspberrypi-headers [############################################] 100%
(3/3) installing dkms-8192cu [############################################] 100%

Creating symlink /var/lib/dkms/8192cu/v4.0.2_9000.20130911/source ->
/usr/src/8192cu-v4.0.2_9000.20130911

DKMS: add completed.

Kernel preparation unnecessary for this kernel. Skipping...

Building module:
cleaning build area.......
cd /var/lib/dkms/8192cu/v4.0.2_9000.20130911/build; make ARCH=arm modules.......................................................................................................................................................................................................................')

Seems like many users could benefit if this was a pre-built package.

EDIT: The solution was not in the driver, but downgrading by building myself version 1.0 of wpa_supplicant. Thank you graysky for the solution.
Last edited by maggie2 on Sun Mar 22, 2015 5:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Realteak 8192cu wifi confusion

Postby moonman » Sat Mar 21, 2015 4:58 am

1. Have you read this thread? dkms-8192cu is the driver that is included in the rpi kernel
2. Do you know that drivers in linux are part of kernel space. You cannot build a driver for 1 kernel and then transfer *.ko to another. It has to be rebuilt for every kernel version.
Pogoplug V4 | GoFlex Home | Raspberry Pi 4 4GB | CuBox-i4 Pro | ClearFog | BeagleBone Black | Odroid U2 | Odroid C1 | Odroid XU4
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Re: Realteak 8192cu wifi confusion

Postby maggie2 » Sat Mar 21, 2015 9:03 am

I thought this could be provided like the nvidia driver is for Arch x86_64 where it is compiled by the distro maintainers and it matches the kernel version.
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Re: Realteak 8192cu wifi confusion

Postby moonman » Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:37 pm

Arch has 2 official kernels: 1 for x86 and one for x86_64, outside of these you are forced to use nvidia-dkms.
We have ~40 kernels
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-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Re: Realteak 8192cu wifi confusion

Postby maggie2 » Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:48 pm

That sounds fair, thank you for explaining. I didn't know you had so many of them.
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