Samsung N130 Realtek 8192 doesn't work in Fedora 12

[SEGMAT]

Hello! I have a Samsung N130 with a Realtek 8192 wifi card (possibly 8192e, I'm not sure) and I am trying to run Fedora 12 on it. I used to run Ubuntu until trying their latest beta and realizing it's not very good, so I looked for something else. Ubuntu was at least easy to get the wifi working with just a few quick commands that were written out, word for word, in order, on the Ubuntu forums. I tried openSUSE on here and it didn't have wifi working out of the box either but people on their forums refused to give me actual instructions and just kept bumping me from thread to thread with people giving vague advice or else just telling me I was looking in the wrong place. I'm hoping that someone can give me clear and detailed instructions on how to get this wifi card working. Keep in mind that I am coming from Ubuntu and so I'm not super comfortable in CLI, if I need to do some CL stuff I will need clear and detailed instructions on how to do that.

Please and thank-you, Matt

[carterpants]

What exactly is not working?

Can you see the wifi port in NetworkManager?
Do you see any errors in /var/log/messages pertaining to NetworkManager?

A simple "its not working" makes offering suggestions rather difficult

[smr54]

Run

lspci

Give us the line that mentions the card, probably second or third line from bottom.

As carterpants (great nick, btw), says, it's a bit hard to help.

Take a look at

http://home.roadrunner.com/~computer.../wireless.html

You can try the steps there to see if it's a NetworkManager issue or an issue with the card.

You can also search the forums for R8192 and see if someone has had and solved, the problem.

[SEGMAT]

Sorry for not being clearer in the original post. It doesn't show up when I click on the network icon in the system tray, all it shows is the wired connection. This makes me think that it's simply a lack of drivers. I ran the command you suggested and I will just include all the information in here just in case I get something wrong and give you the wrong information and then need to waste time later on. Thanks!

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
02:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 8192 (rev 01)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)

[acrobat]

I managed to get the Realtek 8192E working on my Samsung N150 in Fedora 13 beta using Linux kernel 2.6.33. For 32-bit the driver is already in the kernel, but you have to get the firmware from kernel.org. Install git if you haven't already, and then:

git clone git://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/gregkh/firmware.git
su -c "cp -av firmware/RTL8192E /lib/firmware/"

Getting this card to work under 64-bit Linux is a little trickier. There is no in-kernel driver yet, but Realtek have built one and have been emailing it out to anyone who asks. It can be downloaded from here: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1460038.

Attempting to compile the driver from source straight away produces an error in Fedora 13 beta. I think it's because the installation process looks for depmod in /usr/bin, whereas in Fedora it is installed in /sbin. I managed to compile the driver by simply copying depmod from /sbin to /usr/bin, but I'm sure there must be a more 'correct' way to do this! Possibly by hand-editing the driver makefiles (there are three: the main one, HAL/rtl8192/Makefile, and rtllib/Makefile).

After compiling the driver and rebooting, my wifi worked straight away! (No need to use ./wlan0up.)

Hope this helps!

---------- Post added at 06:59 PM CDT ---------- Previous post was at 06:33 PM CDT ----------

Whoops, forgot to mention that instructions for how to compile the driver are included in the forum post I linked to. If you are not using sudo then you can skip step 2 and simply run 'make' and 'make install' using su -c:

su -c "make"
su -c "make install"

As I said, I found that I didn't have to do step 6 - I could use NetworkManager to connect to the network straight away.

Hope that makes sense!