Crappy WiFi HardWare That Works with Ubuntu 10.10 AMD64

My crappy Trendnet TEW-228PI has been on its last leg for a long time.  It gives me some connection but I really have to stay on top of it as it takes a long time to see my AP and drops connection randomly.  I was able to get the Windows driver to work with it but only barely.  I don't know if it has to do with its shorty antenna or what.  But bottom line, it doesn't work well at all.

Finally I had had enough.  I bought this super duper Wireless 802.11b/g PCI card from Edimax, model EW-7128G.  Wow.  I didn't have to type any command at all.  What a disappointment.  Perhaps it has this detachable antenna, the signal is much better than before.  The card just works and I feel like why didn't I buy it earlier.  

uname -a
Linux [redacted-desktop 2.6.35-25-generic #44-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jan 21 17:40:44 UTC 2011 x86_64 GNU/Linux

lspci
04:07.0 Network controller: RaLink RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI

sudo lshw -C network
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: RT2561/RT61 802.11g PCI
vendor: RaLink
physical id: 7
bus info: pci@0000:04:07.0
logical name: wlan2
version: 00
serial: 00:1f:1f:a8:22:36
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rt61pci driverversion=2.6.35-25-generic firmware=N/A ip=192.168.1.108 latency=32 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bg
resources: irq:21 memory:fdef0000-fdef7fff

Ubuntu 10.04 64 bit and Wifi Messes Up (RTL 8180L)

Initially it worked like a charm.  But then some where along those automatic upgrades and what not, the wifi became so unreliable that it could hardly be used--it can't be connected, it can't be authenticated, it kept disconnecting.  Basically it can't be used.  I had to resort to get a cross wire RJ-45 to join to my notebook wifi connection in order to fix it.  To make a long story short.  I have to go to realtek's super duper web site and download their Windows 64 bit inf file.  I got the ndiswrapper program in my Ubuntu and the rest is just picking the downloaded inf driver file which couldn't be easier.  But I really don't understand why the original Ubuntu or Linux module doesn't work over time.  It got to do with maybe an upgraded kernel or something because it worked initially.  Now I got my wi-fi back, and the signal seems to be more accurate instead of the like 126% that got shown previously.

update 10/6/2010:
Things just went downhill.  But I stopped it from sliding down further.
Again for reasons I couldn't explain and I hate it when I couldn't explain what happened.  The wifi stopped working again.  I reverted it back to rtl8180 but the connection was extremely iffy.  Very slow and sometimes the connection is no good.  I tried to use WEP still no good.  I wonder.  Because like I said it worked out of the box up until a certain point.

In the end, I reverted back to ndiswrapper using the Windows 64 bit driver, namely netrtw.inf.  I was able to get a realistic reading of the signal instead of something like 126% but poor connection, I got like 68% but pretty good speed considering it's a 11Mb b connection

here is my sudo iwconfig wlan0


IEEE 802.11b  ESSID:"redacted"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.437 GHz  Access Point: 00:21:29:8A:F3:75
          Bit Rate=11 Mb/s   Tx-Power:20 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3
          RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:F400-2D6C-EFAE-76F5-16D2-1751-76A6-A290-C249-8E81-DE00-ECF8-43B1-78F6-C312-5B90   Security mode:restricted
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:67/100  Signal level:-53 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:2019800144   Missed beacon:0


iwlist scan

lo        Interface doesn't support scanning.

eth0      Interface doesn't support scanning.

wlan0     Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:21:29:8A:F3:75
                    ESSID:"redacted"
                    Protocol:IEEE 802.11b
                    Mode:Managed
                    Frequency:2.437 GHz (Channel 6)
                    Quality:78/100  Signal level:-46 dBm  Noise level:-96 dBm
                    Encryption key:on
                    Bit Rates:1 Mb/s; 2 Mb/s; 5.5 Mb/s; 11 Mb/s; 18 Mb/s
                              24 Mb/s; 36 Mb/s; 54 Mb/s
                    Extra:bcn_int=100
                    Extra:atim=0
                    IE: WPA Version 1
                        Group Cipher : TKIP
                        Pairwise Ciphers (1) : TKIP
                        Authentication Suites (1) : PSK

(note: screen capture on opening window doesn't work ... sigh, either entire desktop or selected area.  what's wrong with these people?)

If I were using the rtl8180 driver sudo iwconfig wlan0 shows I have Encryption key:off which doesn't seem right.  My guess is WPA doesn't work or work well with the native rtl8180 driver, actually the same can be said with WEP or no security.  In other words, it doesn't work well at all, at least that's my experience for the past few days.  The Windows netrtw.inf isn't flawless, there were a couple of times I couldn't get it installed with ndiswrapper but most of the time it takes it all right.  So it's very very weird.  Anyway, I rebooted the system a couple of times and it still works.

IF after a few days, it messes up again, then perhaps I would get a new PCI card for wifi G that supports WPA or other more advanced encryption technologies--does it make sense?  I guess it doesn't.

UPDATE 12/29/2010
Just to give an update here.  The wifi is still very much iffy meaning sometimes it just doesn't connect and sometimes it just drops the connection for no good reason that I know of.  If you need a solid connection then it is not really working.  One of these days I may just need to spend a few dollars to upgrade the wifi card.  The router seems to be fine as all of my, okay not all as my good old Thinkpad R51 does drop connection like once a week or so, but definitely not as temperamental as the Ubuntu.  Other devices, handhelds and notebooks work pretty flawlessly.  I am on Ubuntu 10.10 64 bit now.

Ubuntu 8.04 Hardy Heron

I got my Vista to download the iso ... don't you think Vista is good for nothing. md5 to check sum and burned the image onto a CD-R. All by following Ubuntu's instructions which are usually are OKAY if you can find them. I find their site generally pretty hard to navigate.

My rig is a dinosaur machine with two harddrives with Ubuntu 7.10 running pretty well from the smaller 40GB drive. My whopping 160GB drive was pretty much unmolested. (The other earlier post using Update to update from 7.10 to 8.04 was for another machine all together. This is done via a CD-R burned LiveCD installation)

wifi using Realtek 8180, resolved.

So I decided to install Ubuntu 8.04 onto my whopping 160GB drive and see what happens. The installation takes about 15 minutes and it all went well except I still can't get my wifi works out of the box. My cheapo wifi PCI card uses realtek 8180 chipset and never worked out of the box. I was hoping the ndiswrapper (Windows wireless driver program) would be automagically installed in 8.04 to make life less painful. Alas, life is not a bed of roses when it comes to Linux. And how the hell am I going to get the 7.10 ndiswrapper back....I really forgot how I found this one out even though it was only yesterday. It's via Synaptic manager of course. I just need to put the LiveCD into the drive and let it be a source and then search for the string "ndis". Then installed the packages from the CD. I mounted my 40GB drive and find the INF file I downloaded from way back when I did Ubuntu 7.10 and copy it to my drive (what was I thinking? I could have just installed the INF from there why did the copy and paste). I then run the Windows wireless driver program from the System Administration menu and it's almost painless. I got my network connection back. Once I got the Internet under my thumb, I rule.

GRUB error 18, resolved.

Well things went kind of downhill and straight to hell when I tried to get the ATI graphics driver to work somewhat better like in 7.10. For some peculiar reason, after a couple of add and remove, my system or actually GRUB can't even boot to 8.04 nor 7.10 any more. That's major.

The error was like GRUB error 18 and the system just stopped cold.

Again I somewhat forgot how to fix it ... even it's only yesterday.
OKAY I will try to recall ...

I even tried to re-install the system again. But to no avail, thank goodness it took about 15 minutes....

Okay, more Googling....

Boot up from the LiveCd again,
get to the terminal
type some crap like
>sudo grub
grub>root (hd0,0)
grub>setup (hd0,0)
grub>quit

then reboot system
and magically, now grub gives me back my 7.10 boot menu.

But I am not happy with 7.10. I was but once you got it, you wanted to be at 8.04...
So more trial and error and more Google.

I tried to change hd0 to hd1 but again no good. I tried to re-install the system again, no good.

OKAY, re-installed again, but this time after some Google and some insights or sixth sense actually, when in partitioning, I clicked on the advance button, and changed the default hd0 to hda from the drop down and went through the rest of the 15 minutes installation process. Reboot, now I am in business, the GRUB menu now gives me the option of picking 8.04. I have yet to fully understand the mistake I've made and how I actually got it corrected. My primary drive is the hda where the boot takes place. My second drive is where 8.04 is. So far after 24 hours, a half dozen reboots, GRUB is still working properly so I guess I must have fixed the problem.

Now I have to go on solve the display problem...the thread I got for it didn't quite help.

UPDATE 4/27/2007

Display, nvidia-glx-new, resolved.

At least I got my display back to 7.10 performance.
The nvida-glx-new package was I guess never installed. Under System, Administration, Hardware drivers, the nvidia-new was marked enabled, but not used. It's really the pinnacle of message, what the hell is it trying to tell you? I have no idea. I googled a bit, and some easy but doesn't make sense solution was like unmark to disable. Reboot. Then mark enable. I tried a few times wouldn't do anything. And I even monkeyed with Synaptic manager to change the Repository to Other and let the manager find the fastest servers for download. But no go. BUT, the strangest thing happened. After I actually shut it down, and boot up, and marked it enable, actually the system went to download the package nvidia-glx-new this time and got the sucker installed. And now with a system reboot, I got my 1600x1000 back at least where it was. I could never get my 1680x1050 back and I read maybe I have to use the non-dvi plug for the HP w2207. So I am always 400 pixels short.
UPDATE: 4/28/08
Finally I unplugged the dvi cable and used the vga cable instead. And guess what, I got my 1680x1050 pixel back but the refresh rate is either 50 or 51hz, that's a bit mind boggling, why the 1 hz difference? The ideal 60hz is unattainable as of now. The DVI is supposed to give better graphics but I can't tell the difference. So I will stick with the VGA cable.
YET ANOTHER UPDATE: 4/30/2008
Via Add/Remove, I got the Nvidia server and the System Info. And System Info I can configure using the Nvidia Server to make the display on spec, that is 1680x1050 @60hz. But I have the impression that it might not be very stable. Why, because I was doing that in Ubuntu 7.10 and for some inexplicable reason, or things I don't know enough I call inexplicable, when I changed it to 1680x1050@60hz, between users, the screen blackout. I haven't do a few reboots in 8.04 so I don't know if the setting will stay and reliable, but it's doable.
YET STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: 5/5/2008
Seems like the 1680x1050 @60hz is sticking just fine in Hardy Heron. Well, I haven't tested it when I switch between users as I don't have any other users setup there.
YET YET STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: 8/2/08
the 1680x1050 @60mhz is doable but you have to use the VGA plug. The DVI plug wouldn't work. That's my experience with my LCD monitor. That's not a new piece of information, just to recap.
YET YET STILL ANOTHER UPDATE: 3/11/09
The video card is GeForce FX 5500 with 128MB, the DVI just max out at 1600x1000


First impressions
The fonts look better from Firefox 3 in Hardy Heron, actually much better, much better.
Even got yahoo! blog display correctly.
You still need to download Gstreamer extra plugins to simply play mp3.

Ubuntu 7.10

Just updated my basement server to Ubuntu 7.10
Linux mybox-desktop 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Sun Oct 14 23:05:12 GMT 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

The blogger picture upload crashing seems to be gone.

But my wifi driver is not playing well with this kernel. It caused kernel panic when booting up. So I am now hard wired for the time being. On the other hand if I booted from an older kernel, the wifi just worked. Last time I unblacklisted the wifi driver, seems like this time, the kernel really can't stand that driver.

Wifi post, previously.

UPDATE (1/2/2008 and 4/27/2008):
I think ndiswrapper is now built-in in the GNOME menu. So all you have to do is to find the Windows INF file and dump it somewhere to use it. Again, they are making it easier to do wifi. Kudos to the developers.  ehhhhhh.  Not built-in, but I think if from Synaptic, you can type "ndis" to find the package and have it installed.  So, now, installing a Windows wireless driver is just a piece of cake instead of a pain in the butt.  Though this wireless feature doesn't even come out of the box in Hardy Heron, you still need to manually do so, and if you don't have a RJ-45 connection first, no worry, the ndiswrapper packages are on the Hardy Heron LiveCD, so just point your Synaptic manager there and you will be fine.

UPDATE (11/12/2007):

Get wifi working under my Ubuntu 7.10 box with kernel 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP (don't ask me I don't know what they mean, I just follow this thread from the ubuntu forum, the below is pretty much a rehash of the instruction found on that thread, kudos to the original poster m_bridge)

My card is the Trendnet 228PI with rtl8180 (or rtl8180L?) chipset. The module that comes with the distribution would cause kernel panic whenever I try to activate it. (Note: I don't know if WEP is a factor but I didn't test it without WEP)

The solution is to get ndiswrapper to nicely wrap around the driver designed for Windows. Don't say Windows is good for nothing. It's just a myth that Windows crashes left and right, I use XP and 2000, they don't crash. I digress. Remove the offending r8180 module. Configure the wlan, and that's it.

Here is the mini howto/cookbook (as I don't fully comprehend every step) from the thread mentioned above.

I have a RJ-45 wired network connection to do all these while the wireless connection is disabled.

Get ndiswrapper
System, Administration, Synaptic Package Manager
search for ndiswrapper, then check and install the found packages, in my case three of them.

Get NET8180.INF
Go to Realtek Taiwan and do some search on rtl8180, I downloaded the one that says for Windows 2000 version 1.73 here. Unzip and put it in some folder /home/me/8180/NET8180.INF

fire up your Terminal

1) see the rtl8180 module got loaded
$ lsmod | grep 818
see something with r8180
2) remove the offending module and blacklist it
$ sudo rmmod r8180
$ gksudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
add this line at the bottom
blacklist r8180
save the file

3) Reboot machine and make sure the module not loaded anymore
$ lsmod | grep 818
there should be no results

4) Install the Windows driver NET8180.INF
$ sudo ndiswrapper - i /home/me/8180/NET8180.INF
$ sudo ndiswrapper -l
I get net8180 driver installed

5) load ndiswrapper module
$ sudo depmod -a
$ sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

6) configure your wireless network
click on the little network icon on the upper right hand corner next to the date (assuming you are using the default nautilus desktop, and that's the one I know and use). At this point I removed the appending X to the ESSID that I added in order to make it work in 7.04. No more appending extra character for the ESSID.

7) if the card is working, and it "should" then do the following
$ sudo ndiswrapper -m
$ gksudo gedit /etc/modules
append below at the end and save:
ndiswrapper

8) reboot and it "should" work.

More Apple Hardware Updates

Apple formally announces the introduction of 802.11n. Speed is definitely in the air. Apple is going to charge $1.99 for Core 2 Duo Mac users to enable this 802.11n feature. That doesn't sound nice or generous at all considering it's a software or firmware upgrade. Apple also claims to be "the leaders in wireless innovation ... and leading the way into a new generation with 802.11n." iThink Linksys came out with the 802.11n router way earlier. But Apple has gotten into the habit of ignoring and abusing Linksys anyway, like Apple totally took the iPhone name with no respect to Linksys ownership of the name. Well from day one, Apple had been pretty brazen in terms of name grabbing. The name Apple was used by Apple Records before there was Apple Computer but Jobs took it anyway.

For those of you whose wife thinks there is too much radiation going on inside your apartment and hence bans WiFi, I feel truly sorry for you.