How to install Toshiba L40 B14 Wireless Adapter (
ID 0bda:8197 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187B) on Ubuntu and
Debian Linux
I've been struggling for more than 10 hours to fix up
issues on
a Ubuntu Maverick-Meerkaat with a rtl8187B Wireless
Adapter
The RTL8187B almost drove me mad. I could see the wlan0 which meant
the kernel is detecting the device, I could even bring it up with
ifconfig wlan0 up , however when I tried it in gnome's
network-manager or
wicd the wireless networks were
not showing up.
Trying to scan for networks using the commands:
ubuntu:~# iwlist wlan0 scan
was also unsuccesful, trying to bring up and down the wireless
wlan0 interface with:
ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 up
or
ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 down
Both returned the error:
iwconfig: unknown command "up" and
iwconfig: unknown
command "down"
Running simply
iwconfig was properly returning information
about my Wireless Interface
wlan0 :
wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
The exact information I could get about the wireless device was via
the command:
ubuntu:~# lsusb | grep realtek
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0bda:8197 Realtek Semiconductor Corp.
RTL8187B Wireless Adapter
Trying manually to scan for wireless networks from console or
gnome-terminal with command returned also the below weird
results:
ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 scan
iwconfig: unknown command "scan"
More oddly tunning wlan0 interface with commands like:
ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 mode managed
ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 essid ESSID
ubuntu:~# iwconfig wlan0 rate 11M
were succesful ...
I read a bunch of documentation online concerning the wireless card
troubles on Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian etc.
Just few of all the resources I've read and tried are:
http://rtl-wifi.sourceforge.net/wiki/Main_Page (Returning
empty page already a lot resource)
http://rtl8187b.sourceforge.net (A fork of
rtl-wifi.sourceforge.net which is still available though it was not
usable)
Some of the other resources which most of the people recommended as
a way to properly install the
RTL8187B wireless driver on
linux was located on the website:
http://datanorth.net/~cuervo/rtl8187b/ (Trying to access
this page returned a 404 error e.g. this page is no-longer
usable)
I found even a webpage in Ubuntu Help which claimed to explain how
to properly install and configure the RTL8187B wireless driver on
which is below:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Device/RealtekRTL8187b
Even the Ubuntu help instructions were pointing me to the
broken
cuervo's website URL
Anyways I was able to find the rtl8187b-modified-dist.tar.gz
online and made a mirror
of rtl8187b-modified-dist.tar.gz which you can download
here
Another rtl8187b driver I found was on a toshiba website made
especailly for the wireless linux drivers:
http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/eng/pc/sat_PSPD0_report.htm
The questionable file which was claimed to properly be able to make
the Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187B Wireless Adapter to
work out was called rl8187b-modified-804.tar.gz.
I've
made a mirror of rtl8187b-modified-804.tar.gz is here
None of the driver archives rtl8187b-modified-dist.tar.gz
and rl8187b-modified-804.tar.gz that was supposed to make
the Toshiba L40 realtek wireless to work out, after compiling and
installing the drivers from source worked out ...
Both archives produced plenty of error messages and it seems on
newer kernels like the one on this notebook:
Linux zlatina 2.6.35-28-generic #50-Ubuntu SMP Fri Mar 18
19:00:26 UTC 2011 i686 GNU/Linux, they're no longer
usable.
The compile errors I got when I tried compiling the rtl8187b driver
provided by the archive rtl8187b-modified-dist were:
root@ubuntu:/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified# sh makedrv
rm -fr *.mod.c *.mod *.o .*.cmd *.mod.* *.ko *.o *~
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.35-28-generic/build
M=/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/ieee80211 CC=gcc modules
make[1]: Entering directory
`/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic'
scripts/Makefile.build:49: *** CFLAGS was changed in
"/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/ieee80211/Makefile". Fix it to use
EXTRA_CFLAGS. Stop.
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/ieee80211]
Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory
`/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic'
make: *** [modules] Error 2
rm -fr *.mod.c *.mod *.o .*.cmd *.ko *~
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.35-28-generic/build
M=/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/rtl8187 CC=gcc modules
make[1]: Entering directory
`/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic'
scripts/Makefile.build:49: *** CFLAGS was changed in
"/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/rtl8187/Makefile". Fix it to use
EXTRA_CFLAGS. Stop.
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified/rtl8187]
Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory
`/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic'
make: *** [modules] Error 2
root@ubuntu:/home/zlatina/rtl8187b-modified#
Another driver I tried which was found on aircrack-ng.org's website
was rtl8187_linux_26.1010.zip
Here are the error messages I experienced while I tried to compile
the realtek wireless driver from the archive
rtl8187_linux_26.1010.0622.2006
compilation terminated.
make[2]: ***
[/home/zlatina/rtl8187_linux_26.1010.0622.2006/beta-8187/r8187_core.o]
Error 1
make[1]: ***
[_module_/home/zlatina/rtl8187_linux_26.1010.0622.2006/beta-8187]
Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory
`/usr/src/linux-headers-2.6.35-28-generic'
make: *** [modules] Error 2
make: *** [modules] Error 2
I tried a number of fix ups hoping to solve the compile error
messages, but my efforts were useless, as it seems many things has
changed in newer Ubuntu versions and they could no longer be
compiled.
As I realized I couldn't make the native drivers provided by the
above sources compile, I decided to give a try to the Windows
drivers for Realtek 8187B with ndiswrapper, a
link for download of Realtek 8187B
(RTL8187B_XP_6.1163.0331.2010_Win7_62.1182.0331.2010_UI_1.00.0179.L.tar.gz
is found here
I untarred the
RTL8187B_XP_6.1163.0331.2010_Win7_62.1182.0331.2010_UI_1.00.0179.L.tar.gz
and used ndiswrapper to load driver like so:
root@ubuntu:~# tar -zxvf
RTL8187B_XP_6.1163.0331.2010_Win7_62.1182.0331.2010_UI_1.00.0179.L.tar.gz
root@ubuntu:/home/zlatina/RTL8187B#
root@ubuntu:/home/zlatina/RTL8187B# cd Driver/WinXP
root@ubuntu:/home/zlatina/RTL8187B/Driver/WinXP# ndiswrapper -i
net8187b.inf
In order to test the RTL8178B Windows driver I used:
root@ubuntu:~# ndiswrapper -l
net8187b : driver installed
device (0BDA:8197) present (alternate driver:
rtl8187)
To finally load the Windows XP RTL8187B driver on the Ubuntu I used
again ndiswrapper:
root@ubuntu:~# ndiswrapper -m
Further on I used the ndisgtk graphical ndiswrapper
interface to once again test if the Windows driver is working on
the Ubuntu and it seemed like it is working, however still my
wicd was unable to find any wireless network ....
There were many online documentation which claimed that the driver
for rtl8187b works out of the box on newer kernel releases
(kernel versions > 2.6.24)
Finally I found out there is a driver which is a default one with
the Ubuntu e.g. rtl8187.ko , I proceeded and loaded the
module:
root@ubuntu:~# modprobe rtl8187
I also decided to check out if the hardware switch button of the
Toshiba Satellite L40 notebook is not switched off and guess what
?! The Wireless ON/OFF button was switched OFF!!! OMG ...
I switched on the button and wicd immediately started
showing up the wireless networks ...
To make the rtl8187 module load on Ubuntu boot up, I had to
issue the command:
root@ubuntu:~# echo 'rtl8187' >>
/etc/modules
Voila after all this struggle the wireless card is working now,
it's sad I had to loose about 10 hours of time until I come with
the simple solution of using the default provided ubuntu driver
rtl8187 , what is strange is how comes that it does not load
up automatically.
Thanks God it works now.