Wifi USB - SLAX

[myfriday]

I put it there and it still doesnt work

[waterhead]

It has been my experience that when it is looking for the firmware in a sub-directory, the firmware error message will say so. I know that this is true for Broadcom wireless, where the error message will include the /firmware/b43 path. I don't see anything like that in your error message.

In Ubuntu, the firmware folder has sub-folders for the specific kernel versions installed. The firmware needs to be placed in the kernel sub-folder.

Maybe this is a Slackware thing. What exactly is the contents of your /lib/firmware directory? Are there any other folders in there?

EDIT: I found some info on this:

Double check /etc/hotplug/firmware.agent on where to install firmware images to

I think that firmware.agent is a text file that you can easily open and read.

[myfriday]

there isnt that etc/hotplug directory either, and i checked the files and stuff.......hmmm

[waterhead]

I found a README file for the p54 driver here:

http://www.microalcarria.com/descarg...m54-1.1/README

There is an interesting section concerning the firmware.

Firmware/hotplug
----------------

This driver needs to upload the firmware to the NIC's ram on initialization
it does so by requesting the firmware from the hotplug subsystem by asking
for "isl3890" or "isl3877" depending on the hardware detected. We don't
actually know of any card using isl3877 so if you do let us know

Make sure the hotplug system has been setup properly, otherwise you
might get errors in the kernel log stating that request_firmware() has failed

*) does "cat /proc/sys/kernel/hotplug" show something like "/sbin/hotplug"?

*) is /sbin/hotplug present?

*) is the "firmware" agent is present (call /sbin/hotplug without
any argument to show a list of available agents)

*) have you copied the firmware file into the folder expected by
firmware.agent? (usually "/usr/lib/hotplug/firmware/")

*) for 2.6.x you need to mount sysfs!

Other issues not directly related to firmware uploading:

*) [cardbus] have 'yenta_socket' module loaded in order to make cardbus
card visible to the kernel pci subsystem? (check with lspci(1) whether
device is visible to the kernel)

Again it mentions the firmware.agent file. It also list the firmware folder as /usr/lib/hotplug/firmware. But this could be an old document.

[myfriday]

Im not finding any hotplug directories

[waterhead]

I guess that stuff was too old to be of any use. I didn't have time to research it before I posted it.

The problem still seems to be with it not finding the firmware. Try unloading and reloading the module. Then check dmesg again, to see if the firmware error is different. Use the su command to first gain root privileges.

su <enter>
Password:

modprobe -r p54

modprobe p54

[myfriday]

Ok I did that, and im still getting the same error. So Im guessing i have the firmware in the wrong place

[myfriday]

I cant figure this out, so im going back to windows

[waterhead]

I don't know why you picked SLAX as your first Linux distro, but it is not the best choice, especially for a newbie.

I would recommend using Ubuntu or even better, the Ubuntu derivative, Linux Mint. If you need a light weight distro, there is the Eee PC version of Ubuntu named Easy Peasy.

You usually can boot them into a LiveCD mode, to check it out. You will most likely have install your wireless firmware in those too. So save a copy of it.

It also occured to me that you may have the firmware misnamed:

isl3887usb_bare

The third character is a lower case "L", not the number one (1).

[myfriday]

i didnt use ubuntu because im on an old pentium 2, and yes im positive i put a "l" instead of a "1" because i copied what the website said put. Im downloading Xubuntu and seeing if thats any better