Installing driver for WiFi adapter

[Sam Varshavchik]

Paul Smith writes:

> On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 9:22 PM, Sam Varshavchik <mrsam at courier-mta.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.

That may not mean anything. These kinds of idiot lights are often software  
controlled. My laptop has a built-in idiot light for it's built-in wireless  
cards. It obediently lights up when I boot Windows. It stays off in Fedora.  
Maybe in blinks occasionally, but wireless works just fine. The kernel  
driver, I guess, doesn't bother to turn on the idiot light, when it  
initializes the adapter.

The most important thing is whether NetworkManager claims to see a wireless  
interface, and gives you a list of available access points your wireless  
card is hearing, and not whether some idiot light comes on.

A good source of clues is to look at what gets written into  
/var/log/messages, when you plug in the card.


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