Installing driver for WiFi adapter

[John W. Linville]

On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 11:36:06PM +0100, Paul Smith wrote:
> On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 9:30 PM, Paul Smith <phhs80 at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> >> TP-LINK TL-WN821N
> >>> >
> >>> >
> >>> > Can you post output of lsmod and lsusb. Have you installed the firmware
> >>> > for the device into /lib/firmware?  If the device is supported by the
> >>> > kernel you won't be able to load the module without the firmware
> >>> > installed.
> >>> >
> >>> > Google is your friend.
> >>>
> >>> Thanks, Terry.
> >>
> >> Why do you believe you need to install some kind of a driver? From the
> >> below, it looks like your card is an atheros chip-based one, and you have a
> >> bunch of ath9 modules loaded.
> >>
> >> What exactly is or is not working for you.
> >
> > Well, I plug the the USB device and nothing happens. According to the
> > manual, a led should be turned on when I plug the USB.
> 
> A possible explanation is here:
> 
> http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=268068

That relates to the carl9170 driver.  We don't have that firmware
packaged in Fedora either -- no one ever bothered to review my
package of the SH cross compiler used to build the firmware, and I
haven't bothered to bang the drum about it either.  Anyway, that's
a different issue.

The ath9k_htc firmware used to be in the linux-firmware tree, but
apparently they have stopped updating it there?  Not sure...

Anyway, you can find the firmware and get it installed by starting
here:

	http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k_htc#Firmware

Hth!

John
-- 
John W. Linville		The truth will set you free, but first it will
linville at redhat.com			make you miserable. -- James A. Garfield