Problems loading driver for external antenna

[Nils Kassube]

MR ZenWiz wrote:
> On Sat, Dec 18, 2010 at 9:30 AM, John Everard <johneverard at hotmail.com> wrote:
> > READ ME FILE BEGINS
> > 
> > < Installation >
> > Runing the scripts can finish all operations of building up modules
> > from the source code and start the nic.
> > 1. Build up the drivers from the source code
> >  ./makedrv
> > 2. load the driver module to kernel and start up nic
> >  ./wlan0up
> > < Set wireless lan MIBs >
> 
> What happens when you do these two steps?

Probably lots of error messages in the first step already. The driver
seems to be for ancient Linux distributions. The readme file is from
2006 and after that date there have been many changes to the wifi
infrastructure in the kernel. The chances are very slim that such an old
driver might compile with a current kernel.

However, not all is lost. At least in the kernel for Ubuntu 10.04 there
is a module rtl8187 included. While John didn't write which Ubuntu
version he uses, I assume that being new to Ubuntu, he downloaded the
current version 10.10, which should include the module as well.
Therefore the module should load automatically when the wifi adapter is
conected to the USB port. While the readme file included in the original
mail is barely readable, I did see something about wpa_supplicant. Well,
that's an ancient method as well. It would probably still work, but
nowadays Ubuntu uses the network manager with a nice GUI for the
configuration [1]. If that doesn't help, maybe it is worth to have a
look at [2].


Nils

[1] <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/NetworkManager0.7>
[2] <https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/WirelessTroubleShootingGuide>