[Solved] Wireless setup of RealTek rtl8192ce

quazifarhan · 2012-03-03 07:27:27

After installing Arch at Thinkpad e420, I was trying to setup the wireless according to Arch wiki. At one section using ip link to setup the wireless it says:

These examples assume your wireless device is wlan0. Replace wlan0 with the appropriate device name.

But what is my device name? How can I get it?

Is there any guide where I can detect if the required driver is available? If it is available, how to enable it? If not how to download and compile it? I have not installed make during installation, how to install it now from the installation media. The wired connection is not available for me.

Thank you very much for your time.

Last edited by quazifarhan (2012-03-05 04:02:33)

Strike0 · 2012-03-03 14:39:35

quazifarhan wrote:

But what is my device name? How can I get it?
Is there any guide where I can detect if the required driver is available? If it is available, how to enable it? If not how to download and compile it? I have not installed make during installation, how to install it now from the installation media. The wired connection is not available for me.

1. "iwconfig" lists your detected wlan devices. Look in "lsmod" for broadcom related modules that may be loaded already.
2. Please have a look at https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Broadcom_wireless and https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Le … ek_chipset first. The second link also has instructions how to load a driver.
3. It is not the most unproblematic card, but unlikely you need make. Search the wiki links and forum first with the device id of your wifi-card to identify the correct driver. Post the exact device ID here, if you don't get further. Then it is easier for others to give you advice on which driver is right.

Btw, there are also wiki pages on other Lenovo's also to help you hunt minor other issues.

quazifarhan · 2012-03-03 22:35:11

Hi,

Thank for your advice. I have been tinkering around a bit. Using lspci -v I can see that

Kernel driver in use: rtl8192ce
Kernel module: rtl8192ce

So the driver is already there. I tried to load it using modprobe and have been able to scan the available wifi networks successfully. But when I try

iwconfig wlan0 mode Master

(Since the network I wish to connect says mode in master at scan command.) It says

SET failed on device wlan0; invalid argument
Error for wireless network Set Mode(8B06)

or when I try

iwconfig wlan0 essid "<network name>" key s:<WEP key>

I get error:

SET failed on device wlan0; invalid argument
Error for wireless network Set Mode(8B06)

There are some solutions of this by removing the router password, But unfortunately that is not an option too. Is the mode correct, or should i use any other mode? I got the mode from the description of the available networks.

It feels like I am only a step away from the wireless connection. Can someone help me a bit on this. Most of the guides presume a wired connection to setup wifi. So this is a problem for me.

Thank you for your time.

Strike0 · 2012-03-04 00:00:03

Pretty sure you dont want to set master mode for your card. More likely, if anything, you want to set ad hoc mode.
What is the output, if you do

ip link set wlan0 up 
iwlist wlan0 scan
iwconfig wlan0 essid "<network name>" key s:<WEP key>

?

quazifarhan · 2012-03-04 07:36:39

Strike0 wrote:

ip link set wlan0 up 
iwlist wlan0 scan
iwconfig wlan0 essid "<network name>" key s:<WEP key>

This gives the error:

SET failed on device wlan0; invalid argument
Error for wireless network Set Encode (8B06)

But thank for your tip. It was not supposed to be Master mode, but Managed mode.

 iwconfig wlan0 mode Managed

does not give any error. Now

 iwconfig wlan0

results:

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"<My SSID>"
Mode: Managed Access Point:Not-Associated Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr=2347 B Fragment thr:off
Encryption key: off
Power Management: off

It has detected my SSID I think because I have previously edited /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf with

network={
ssid="<My SSID>"
#psk="my-wpa-psk-pass-here"
psk=numbers-generated-by-wpa_passphrase-PWNT-passphrase
}

I will look around forums for how to work

 iwconfig wlan0 essid "<network name>" key s:<WEP key>

. But if you have any tips that would be highly appreciated too.

Thank you for your time.

Strike0 · 2012-03-04 13:19:34

It probably detects your SSID probably because it is the strongest signal. if wpa_supplicant is not invoked, it should not be a difference there.
Anyway, try the different methods to pass your WEP password. (e.g. without "s:"). Still some issues are reported here recently regarding WEP, so there may be a one with your driver also. But you will see those in the forum.
If trying the different password options dont help, look for your driver's option to turn off wireless-n at the moment.
If that does not help, I would turn off router security until installed and updated.

Gusar · 2012-03-04 13:22:33

You're giving conflicting info here: Your wpa_supplicant.conf is configured for WPA-PSK, but on the commandline you're setting up for WEP. So which is your network using?

ewaller · 2012-03-04 18:41:34

Can you please post the output of ip link and of sudo iwlist scan ??

quazifarhan · 2012-03-05 04:00:42

It has worked. I had to do:

  iwconfig wlan0 essid "My SSID" key "wep key"

. Though it is still not perfect (connection drops every 10-15 minute), but it can be fixed now hopefully.

So in a nutshell all i had to do:

modprobe rtl8192ce
ip link set wlan0 up
iwlist wlan0 scan
iwconfig wlan0 essid "My SSID" key "WEP key"
dhcpcd wlan0

Although now I am facing a new problem of pacman key generator not having enough entropy, but I'll post the details on appropriate forum. At least this hurdle is solved.

Thank you all for your tips.

WonderWoofy · 2012-07-30 14:57:07

About the entropy, you just have to wait. Entropy is the process of things moving toward a state of randomness, so if you mash your keyboard a bit, move the mouse, eat a taco, etc. it should speed it up a bit. My new Thinkpad has an Ivy Bridge which apparently has en entropy generator, so it is fast, but with my old Macbook, it took quite some time. On a fresh boot, it would be sometimes as much as 10-15 minutes. So just let it go and go do soething else for a bit.

2ManyDogs · 2012-07-30 17:13:43

quazifarhan wrote:

Although now I am facing a new problem of pacman key generator not having enough entropy, but I'll post the details on appropriate forum. At least this hurdle is solved.

ArchWiki wrote:

For this initialization, entropy is required. Moving your mouse around, pressing random characters at the keyboard or running some disk-based activity (for example in another console running ls -R / or find / -name foo) should generate entropy. If your system does not already have sufficient entropy, this step may take hours; if you actively generate entropy, it will complete much more quickly.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Pa … he_keyring

Last edited by 2ManyDogs (2012-07-30 17:14:29)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-03-03 07:27:27

[Solved] Wireless setup of RealTek rtl8192ce

#2 2012-03-03 14:39:35

Re: [Solved] Wireless setup of RealTek rtl8192ce

#3 2012-03-03 22:35:11

Re: [Solved] Wireless setup of RealTek rtl8192ce

#4 2012-03-04 00:00:03

Re: [Solved] Wireless setup of RealTek rtl8192ce

#5 2012-03-04 07:36:39

Re: [Solved] Wireless setup of RealTek rtl8192ce

#6 2012-03-04 13:19:34

Re: [Solved] Wireless setup of RealTek rtl8192ce

#7 2012-03-04 13:22:33

Re: [Solved] Wireless setup of RealTek rtl8192ce

#8 2012-03-04 18:41:34

Re: [Solved] Wireless setup of RealTek rtl8192ce

#9 2012-03-05 04:00:42

Re: [Solved] Wireless setup of RealTek rtl8192ce

#10 2012-07-30 14:57:07

Re: [Solved] Wireless setup of RealTek rtl8192ce

#11 2012-07-30 17:13:43

Re: [Solved] Wireless setup of RealTek rtl8192ce

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