Unable to get RTL8188ETV working with the driver
Mastiffen opened this issue · comments
Thanks for making a driver for cheap and readily available cards! I was hoping I should be able to get an RTL8188ETV card working with this, so I bought a few of them after I read a posting that this driver should work. But it only partly does. I was going to use it as the access point card in a routed access point setup for my boat, with one Asus USB-AC68 connecting to the remote (which is connected to the cabin wifi) and this card giving stuff on the boat acecss (mainly ESP-32's and two phones working as SignalK dashboards, so I only need 2.4GHz). When I fire it up, I see "Not associated" when hovering over the network icon in the system tray. I have also tried to set it up as the receiving card, instead of the Asus, and that worked connecting to the access point given in the WPA_supplicant config file. The problem is that this is very slow when syncing media files to the boat and copying the library
ifconfig shows me the card, but not much info about it when it's in access point from wpa_supplicant:
wlan0: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500 ether 0c:c6:55:3d:fe:79 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet) RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B) RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0 TX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B) TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
I have of course done a git clone, and I have my headers up to date. This is my version:
Linux 5.10.103-v7l+ #1529 SMP Tue Mar 8 12:24:00 GMT 2022 armv7l GNU/Linux
I have not gone to Bullseye, because I use a Tellstick Duo in the boat for a couple of temp sensors, and that won't work under Bullseye.
This is dmesg when I plug in the card:
[ 182.086619] usb 1-1.1: new high-speed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd [ 182.217855] usb 1-1.1: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=0179, bcdDevice= 0.00 [ 182.217876] usb 1-1.1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3 [ 182.217892] usb 1-1.1: Product: 802.11n WLAN NIC [ 182.217907] usb 1-1.1: Manufacturer: Realtek [ 182.221066] Chip Version Info: CHIP_8188E_Normal_Chip_TSMC_UNKNOWN_CUT(10)_1T1R_RomVer(0) [ 182.249725] EEPROM ID = 0x8129 [ 182.766906] MAC Address = 0c:c6:55:3d:fe:79
Could somebody please give me apointer to what I need to do to get the driver to work with this card in access point mode? I apologize if it's an idiot newbie thing...
If you want to use the chip as an AP, then I suggest you switch to the v5.2.2.4 branch using the command
git checkout origin/v5.2.2.4 -b v5.2.2.4
The code in this branch uses cfg80211 and works with a modern hostapd that uses nl80211 as the driver.
I have not tried this particular form of the chip. Mine is an RTL8188EUS.
Fantastic, thank you VERY much for the help! Works like a charm now, it seems!
Only one more thing: I tried to get it persistant as wlan0 (since it seems like this and the Asus USB takes wlan0 rather erratic) with the command:
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="8188eu", NAME="wlan0"
This should make it persistant if the driver is actually named 8188eu, as lsmod shows. That way I wouldn't have to mess much if I have to replace one of the USB network cards because it has failed. But it doesn't seem to work. Do you have any idea why that is?
You need to change the "wlan0" to "wlan5", or something else that the Asus will not touch. It would also be best if you wrote a similar rule for the Asus dongle.
Yeah, I was going to. But I tried just now with wlan5 for the RTL, and it didn't really do anything. Neither 8188eu or cfg8188eu. Is the driver name wrong? it didn't work to do the same with 8814au for the Asus. This is from lsmod:
cfg80211 761856 2 8814au,8188eu
Edit: Or is this something I should put in a file, and not use as command line command? I'm a bit confused right now... I have read about "70-persistent-net.rule", but that isn't there on my Pi, and these are from before wpa_supplicant, it seems.
That is comething called a udev rule and can not do it in a command line. You need to create (as root) a file /etc/udev/rules.d/70-8188eu.rules and add the line above in that file.
I couldn't get that to work, but after a bit of searching I put both lines into the same file, named /etc/udev/rules.d/70-persistent-net.rules, so I now have:
ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="rtl8188eu", NAME="madmaxruter" ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="8812au", NAME="hytta" ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="8814au", NAME="hytta"
That wa I can use my backup AC card (TP Link) as the link up to the cabin (hytta in Norwegian), while I can use any of the RTL8188ETV-cards I have bought (I bought three, even in crimp hoses they tend to go bad after a couple of years from the corrosive salt water air) as the onboard router card, for ESP-32's, SignalK plotter duplication and other stuff.
Thanks a lot for your help and patience!
Hi again! Sorry to bug you again, but I tried to install the card as a second USB on a 3B (rev 1.2), and it just won't connect to anything. The dongle shows in lsusb and ifconfig, but "not associated" in the network interface icon on the taskbar. I have created a wpa_supplicant file with the correct info, but it just won't connect to anything. I have tried more than one network, all 2.4 GHz. I tried the second driver too, but that didn't change anything. I created a new Pi from scratch, and still nothing. I'm confused as to why it isn't working when it seems like the driver is loaded.