(old)Puppy Linux Discussion Forum

Even though I don't use puppy 2, I've been reading this thread and feel badly at how it's ending.

When hard-working folks use their time to design key pets for others, the community does owe a response to say if the pets function or not.

That said, tempestuous, your work is legendary and I know many users, starting with me, are eternally grateful. The eee pets you made for puppy 4.* have made me a puppy user for life--you made wifi, fan control, etc. available, and had you not, many, many eee users would've moved on to another flavor of linux.

You built a subcommunity, and thank you for it,
Jake

Users requiring alchemy? Yes that sounds about right. Many users are totally unaware of what wireless hardware there is inside their computers. Puppy is a linux distro for beginners so thats to be expected.

How would someone discover what hardware they have or drivers they need?

jakfish wrote:Even though I don't use puppy 2, I've been reading this thread and feel badly at how it's ending.

When hard-working folks use their time to design key pets for others, the community does owe a response to say if the pets function or not.

That said, tempestuous, your work is legendary and I know many users, starting with me, are eternally grateful. The eee pets you made for puppy 4.* have made me a puppy user for life--you made wifi, fan control, etc. available, and had you not, many, many eee users would've moved on to another flavor of linux.

You built a subcommunity, and thank you for it,
Jake

Seconded

tempestuous wrote:It's bizarre that of the 50 people who have downloaded the updated rt73 driver dotpet, just one person reported a problem with the driver ...
but within 24 hours 6 others had downloaded the hotfix which was specifically provided for one particular situation, and was unconfirmed to even be helpful!
I call this "download fever". Maybe the thinking is that if you click on any and all technical fixes, relevant or not, that your hardware may somehow magically work better with Puppy Linux?

It's difficult to offer sound, accurate, and sensible technical solutions when new users treat Linux as alchemy.

Users, just sign up and post. It costs you nothing. A developers job is to evaluate all the input available, no matter how trivial you think it is.

Thanks tempestuous

ecomoney wrote:Users requiring alchemy? Yes that sounds about right. Many users are totally unaware of what wireless hardware there is inside their computers. Puppy is a linux distro for beginners so thats to be expected.

How would someone discover what hardware they have or drivers they need?

Erm, Rob.

While I believe your intentions are good, the questions you pose are for Barry. Ask him.

Thanks for your words of support Jake and Mick, but I don't desire a pat on the back.
I simply want the forum to be an informational resource, rather than a worthless repository of random guesswork, and a convenient excuse for new users to claim that Linux is unworkable.

ecomoney wrote:How would someone discover what hardware they have or drivers they need?

Ask. That's my point.
I'm not discouraging new users from getting involved. I'm encouraging them to get involved in a sensible and productive fashion, rather than wasting effort with silly, unproductive guesswork.

01micko wrote:Users, just sign up and post.

Indeed.

Here are the hfs and hfsplus modules, for Macintosh filesystem support.

tempestuous wrote:Next, the newer Ralink rt2860sta and rt2870sta wifi drivers.
These are from the proprietary Ralink source code at
http://www.ralinktech.com/ralink/Home/S ... Linux.html

The RT2860 wifi chipset is found in these ASUS Eee models:
901............

Has anyone got rt2860 to work in Puppy 214x (on a Eee901)?

The pet installs and I get an interface ra0 as I was expecting but running the scan in the Networkwizard gives (when it runs IFCONFIG ra0 up):

SIOCSIFFLAGS Operation not permitted

Get te same from the terminal.

I have seen reports on Ubunta forums similar to this with the same module but have not found any solutions.

Oct 20 2009:
Ralink rt2860sta wifi driver just updated to ver 2.2.0.0
in earlier post.

The Realtek RTL8180 wifi chipset, for PCI and Cardbus wifi devices, is supported in older Linux kernels by the r8180 driver from http://rtl8180-sa2400.sourceforge.net/
But the rtl8180-sa2400 source code failed to compile against the 2.6.18.1 kernel when this new kernel first appeared with the release of Puppy v2.12, so Barry didn't include this driver at that time.
Shortly afterwards, forum member kirk located upgraded source code and Barry added the driver for Puppy v2.13 or v2.14, and that's the version of driver which carries forward today in Puppy 2.14X.
I have just discovered, however, that Barry only included 3 kernel modules from this driver package, and missed the 4th module; ieee80211_crypt_wep-r8180.
This probably means that unencrypted wifi connections would have worked OK with this driver, but WEP-encrypted connections would have failed.

I now attach a dotpet package with the full complement of modules.
After installing this dotpet, reboot.
Be aware that this driver is far from stable, and sometimes requires some extra configuration steps to get it working.
The WEP-related module may fail to load automatically, and at least one of the encryption-related modules (crc32c) may also fail to load. So before establishing a wifi connection with the Network Wizard, run these 2 commands - Of course, you should first attempt a wifi connection with all encryption disabled at the wifi router. Once you know this works, you can then re-enable encryption at the router, and try again.

If WEP encryption still fails, please refer to -
"How to configure wifi from the commandline"
"PART 4: Troubleshooting, encryption problems"
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 339#159339
There are some additional encryption-related modules which may need to be loaded manually.
WPA encryption is not supported with this driver.

If you need WPA encryption with the RTL8180 device under Puppy 2.14X, you can try the rtl8185-k2.6.18.1.pet
package I posted back in 2007, available at MU's site -
http://dotpups.de/dotpups/Wifi/drivers- ... 2-to-2.14/
This is a completely rewritten version of the driver, but it's only beta quality, so your mileage may vary. It supports WPA encryption, and it also supports the newer (but still quite old) RTL8185 wifi chip.

Generally it's worth noting that the Realtek RTL8180/RTL8185 wifi devices were not reliable in Linux until the release of the 2.6.25 kernel, as used in Puppy 4.1/4.2.

EDIT:
Dotpet re-attached June 22 2015

D-Link DWL-520 rev E (PCI) and DWL-650 rev P (cardbus)

These two wifi devices contain the "SSF" variant of the Prism3 wifi chipset, supported by the hostap_pci/hostap_cs drivers, but this Prism3-SSF chipset also requires external firmware. Puppy 214 already contains the necessary firmware, but it cannot be loaded by the conventional hotplug or udev processes.
The unique method required will be explained shortly, but apart from this, I have just discovered that these two wifi devices cannot possibly work in Puppy 214 because:
i) The firmware-loading function of the hostap_pci/hostap_cs drivers are not enabled in the Puppy 214 kernel configuration.
ii) The device ID's for the DWL-650revP are not properly defined in the hostap_cs source code in Puppy214. Thus the DWL-650revP would be unrecognised, and the driver would fail to load.

I have now compiled the hostap_pci and hostap_cs drivers for Puppy 214 suitably patched and configured for external firmware support.
After installing this dotpet, reboot. Puppy should automatically detect your device and load the hostap_pci or hostap_cs driver. Check with the "lsmod" command. Now run these 4 commands to load the firmware - Be careful - take note of the difference between "ifconfig" and "iwconfig".
Now run the Network Wizard to configure a wifi connection.
If all works OK, you can make this process automatic at each boot up. I have created a script with the above commands at /usr/local/bin/prism3-ssf-load-firmware.sh
This script needs to be run very early in the boot sequence, before the network settings take effect. So open /etc/modprobe.conf in Geany and add this line for the DWL-520revE - Then save.
Obvioulsy for the DWL-650revP substitute "hostap_cs".
Your wifi device should be fully functional at each boot up.

EDIT June 22 2015:
Due to certain forum attachments being deleted, dopet is now here -
http://www.smokey01.com/tempestuous/hos ... 6.18.1.pet

I know this is an old thread, but maybe somebody will pick up and help.

I downloaded the pet for the rt2860 and tried applying it to tuuxxx's 2.14x (on an old sony viao laptop, 256Ram; 256 swap)

I was able to load the module and it detected the device (a belkin f5d8013 wireless card).. However, it was unable to detect any wireless networks.

As a side note:
On another computer, I was able to use ndiswrapper to use the windows driver for this card (rt2860.inf). But for some reason, it won't allow me to copy that driver from computer A to computer B and then successfully use ndiswrapper.

I'd appreciate any help getting this card working. Thanks.

The Orinoco wifi chipset is a very early B-mode wifi device, generally well-supported in Puppy by the standard kernel drivers for PCI and PCMCIA variants.
But the very rare USB variants of this wifi device have only ever been supported by an experimental driver; orinoco_usb
orinoco_usb dotpet now attached.

I obtained the source code from
https://orinoco.svn.sourceforge.net/svn ... nches/usb/

Hi, do you have a broadcom wl.ko driver pet for this kernel?

Here is the proprietary "wl" Broadcom wifi driver.
Be aware that this driver is likely to compete with the standard "bcm43xx" driver already in Puppy 2.14-2.16.
You will need to blacklist, or fully disable the bcm43xx driver before the proprietary driver will work.
To fully disable the old driver, use ROX to go to /lib/modules/2.6.18.1/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/
and shift the "bcm43xx.ko" file to somewhere like /root
Now run this command - Now reboot, and when you run the Network Wizard you should see that the new wl driver has automatically loaded.

EDIT June 22 2015:
Due to certain forum attachments being deleted, dopet is now here -
http://www.smokey01.com/tempestuous/bro ... 6.18.1.pet

tempestuous wrote:Here is the proprietary "wl" Broadcom wifi driver.
Be aware that this driver is likely to compete with the standard "bcm43xx" driver already in Puppy 2.14-2.16.
You will need to blacklist, or fully disable the bcm43xx driver before the proprietary driver will work.
To fully disable the old driver, use ROX to go to /lib/modules/2.6.18.1/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/bcm43xx/
and shift the "bcm43xx.ko" file to somewhere like /root
Now run this command -

Code: Select all

depmod

Now reboot, and when you run the Network Wizard you should see that the new wl driver has automatically loaded.

tempestuous, thank you so much appreciate your quick response and work.

The Network Wizard in Puppy 214X is an older version, and I just learned that in the "Wireless" section it still labels the three "AP Scan" settings by their technical terms of "Supplicant" "Driver" and "Hidden".
Refer image 01-old.
This is unintuitive to the average user.

So I have just modified the Network Wizard gui so these three modes are now rearranged and relabeled descriptively as "Hidden SSID" "Broadcast SSID" and "Driver".
Refer image 02-new.
Net-Wiz-update-214X.pet now attached.

Note: functionality of the Network Wizard is unchanged !
I have simply made it more intuitive for users to configure their wifi settings in Puppy 214X to match their router settings. More recent versions of the Network Wizard already have this change.

I seem to recall that when the Network Wizard was first being re-written to accommodate WPA encryption, tests showed that the "Hidden SSID" setting would generally work with both hidden and broadcast SSID's, but the reverse was not the case - the "Broadcast SSID" setting would usually fail when trying to associate with a hidden SSID.
This is why "Hidden SSID" was chosen to be the default setting.

Hi tempestuous, this is for my Legacy OS 2 based on kernel 2.6.18.1

First, I updated the rt61 driver using your rt61-20090412-k2.6.18.1.pet. Still no wireless network interface.
Next, I replaced the zdrv_214.sfs of Legacy OS2 with the zdrv_214X.sfs of Classic Pup 214X-TOP9 which combined with your rt61 pet worked for me,so I thought I'd give it a try. Still no dice.
Then, I discovered your advice here, viz.,
1) modprobe firmware_class
2) rmmod rt61
but returned Error:Module rt61 does not exist in /proc/modules (still I went ahead with)
3) modprobe rt61
and network setup wizard showed wlan0 ! Happily,I proceeded to configure wireless setup but "Network configuration of wlan0 unsuccessful!" (could be due to my ISP max 6 connections limitation).
A funny thing is at the next bootup, wlan0 is not detected again and I had to redo the above modprobe steps.
Tried a few times with no success. Awaiting your rescue,thanks in advance.

I have an RNX-EasyN1 USB wifi dongle, made by Rosewill and sold by Newegg.

WikiDevi lists rt2870sta driver as compatible. Attempted to use the one in Top10 and it would not load at all (got an error msg, don't remember what it was, sorry!). Installed the dotpet from this thread, and it now will load the driver but the driver does not work with the card. Considering that other examples of this driver also do not work, it may be an error on WikiDevi's part...

rt2800usb is the newer driver for this adapter, and may also work if someone can make it available for this kernel. I know tempestuous is busy right now with life -- is there anyone else who can help?