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(Solved) Driver for Asus PCE-N15 wireless card needed.

Posted: 15. Mar 2012, 11:01
by globetrotterdk
I just purchased an Asus PCE-N15, PCI-Express wireless card for my home built desktop, which is running Salix64 KDE 13.37.

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# lspci -knn
---snip---
07:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter [10ec:8178] (rev 01)
	Subsystem: ASUSTeK Computer Inc. Device [1043:84b6]
---snip---
I bought the card because it was listed as supporting Linux, which it also states on the box. It is possible to download the source code for a driver, as well as the source code for an update to the driver. As a still very new Salix OS user, I am a bit stumped, as I have not yet been able to study thoroughly how to create a SlackBuild, plus that source code "update" to the driver is an added, daunting prospect. I have noticed that most distributions have a driver for the RealTek rtl8192ce chipset. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything through Gslapt, Sourcery or the usual SlackBuild repositories.

I share my Epson SX425W printer wirelessly with all of the computers on my home network. I needed to purchase a wireless card because the new mobo I am using only has one legacy PCI slot, that is already in use.

Anyone have an idea as to how I can sort this driver issue out?

Re: Driver for Asus PCE-N15 wireless card needed.

Posted: 15. Mar 2012, 12:57
by thenktor
globetrotterdk wrote:I have noticed that most distributions have a driver for the RealTek rtl8192ce chipset. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything through Gslapt, Sourcery or the usual SlackBuild repositories.
The driver is part of the kernel. My notebook has some rtl81xx chipset, too. IIRC the kernel of 13.37 to old for this chipset, at least I remember I've messed with compiling 2.6.39RC kernels on that notebook. So I'd suggest to install the kernel from Slackware current.

Re: Driver for Asus PCE-N15 wireless card needed.

Posted: 15. Mar 2012, 16:11
by globetrotterdk
thenktor wrote:
globetrotterdk wrote:I have noticed that most distributions have a driver for the RealTek rtl8192ce chipset. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find anything through Gslapt, Sourcery or the usual SlackBuild repositories.
The driver is part of the kernel. My notebook has some rtl81xx chipset, too. IIRC the kernel of 13.37 to old for this chipset, at least I remember I've messed with compiling 2.6.39RC kernels on that notebook. So I'd suggest to install the kernel from Slackware current.
Cheers. Any howto on that?

Edit:
I think I will need to take care with my Nvidia graphics card driver or I will loose X.org.

Re: Driver for Asus PCE-N15 wireless card needed.

Posted: 15. Mar 2012, 20:25
by Shador
thenktor wrote:So I'd suggest to install the kernel from Slackware current.
Download the kernel packages from current, install them, run lilo -v. Not much more to it than a usual kernel upgrade.

Re: Driver for Asus PCE-N15 wireless card needed.

Posted: 16. Mar 2012, 08:35
by globetrotterdk
Shador wrote:
thenktor wrote:So I'd suggest to install the kernel from Slackware current.
Download the kernel packages from current, install them, run lilo -v. Not much more to it than a usual kernel upgrade.
I have installed the following via slapt-get: kernel-firmware, kernel-generic, kernel-headers, kernel-huge, kernel-modules. I have also looked at the upgrade howto, to get some idea how to do a kernel upgrade. I am btw using grub, so I would need to know what the kernel name would change to, before I edit the relevant bits in grub and run "update-grub".

Re: Driver for Asus PCE-N15 wireless card needed.

Posted: 16. Mar 2012, 09:32
by djemos
You don't need kernel-generic.
kernel name should be vmlinuz-huge-3.2.7

Re: Driver for Asus PCE-N15 wireless card needed.

Posted: 16. Mar 2012, 09:44
by Shador
You need all kernel packages currently installed, but with the version 3.2.7. And you don't need kernel-generic. The current kernel is usually symlinked from /boot/vmlinuz so you can use that. I'd check the files in /boot and the destination of the symlink anyway before rebooting. Anything could go wrong and with a simple ls -l you can see at least which kernels and symlinks are installed.

Re: Driver for Asus PCE-N15 wireless card needed.

Posted: 16. Mar 2012, 16:55
by globetrotterdk
Shador wrote:You need all kernel packages currently installed, but with the version 3.2.7. And you don't need kernel-generic. The current kernel is usually symlinked from /boot/vmlinuz so you can use that. I'd check the files in /boot and the destination of the symlink anyway before rebooting. Anything could go wrong and with a simple ls -l you can see at least which kernels and symlinks are installed.
OK, I think the Nvidia driver I installed needed kernel-generic. How do I get version 3.2.7 of my currently installed kernel packages? Do I get them through slapt-get / Gslapt or do I download them manually from Slackware? If I need to get the packages through slapt-get, I assume that I have to in some fashion temporarily add some repositories to the list?

Re: Driver for Asus PCE-N15 wireless card needed.

Posted: 17. Mar 2012, 05:49
by Akuna
globetrotterdk wrote:OK, I think the Nvidia driver I installed needed kernel-generic.
Maybe you meant kernel-source rather ?
How do I get version 3.2.7 of my currently installed kernel packages? Do I get them through slapt-get / Gslapt or do I download them manually from Slackware? If I need to get the packages through slapt-get, I assume that I have to in some fashion temporarily add some repositories to the list?
No they are blacklisted in gslapt and adding current as repo could cause a big mess without utmost care. The best and simplest is to download the relevant kernel packages from Slackware current repository and install them 'manually' with spkg or installpkg

Re: Driver for Asus PCE-N15 wireless card needed.

Posted: 17. Mar 2012, 11:23
by globetrotterdk
Akuna wrote:
globetrotterdk wrote:OK, I think the Nvidia driver I installed needed kernel-generic.
Maybe you meant kernel-source rather ?
kernel-source is locked in Gslapt as well. I am not sure why kernel-generic is.
Akuna wrote:
globetrotterdk wrote: How do I get version 3.2.7 of my currently installed kernel packages? Do I get them through slapt-get / Gslapt or do I download them manually from Slackware? If I need to get the packages through slapt-get, I assume that I have to in some fashion temporarily add some repositories to the list?
No they are blacklisted in gslapt and adding current as repo could cause a big mess without utmost care. The best and simplest is to download the relevant kernel packages from Slackware current repository and install them 'manually' with spkg or installpkg
As far as I understand, Slackware doesn't have any official repositories. Any recommendations?
1) So I will need to run

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$ ls /var/log/packages/kernel*
download a comparable package for each (except for kernel-generic) from the Slackware current repository?
2) Then I run a

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# slapt-get -i
on each package.
3) Next I should be able to just run an

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# update-grub
command.
4) The last step would be to go through the steps I did before to install a new copy of the Nvidia driver?