So, I have gone through all my drivers for my wireless network card with the Realtek rtl8190p chipset, all but the windows XP driver will convert with ndisgen and all the ones that convert will load; however I never get a wlan0 or a ndis0 network interface in ifconfig. So, having gotten at least a device identification while using the Kubuntu live CD, I went ahead and tried using ndiswrapper, well, it does not work when in a live CD, requires several packages (which also requires an inet connection). I went ahead and installed Kubuntu 9.10, still no wlan0 in ifconfig; however it correctly identifies the card and the chipset in “lspci -v” so I have been setting the OS up for use, I bridged the wireless network connection from my laptop (which makes the inet not work really well on the laptop, but does allow the desktop to get online).
Well, when I installed the ATI drivers for my video card (a must when intending on using VMs) I caught the invisible mouse bug that has been plaguing Ubuntu since at leas v6 (forum posts) and apparently happens in Fedora with NVidia drivers as well. as best I could tell, only with KDE. Since I am very well attached to my KDE I really do not want to switch. So, I have been working without a visible mouse. I got the ndiswrapper up and running, installed ndisgtk so I could have a UI for ndiswrapper, and added the most recent windows x64 driver for my wireless card to the ndisgtk interface and then my system decided it did not want to work anymore. I could open a terminal and do a “ps” or an “ls” but anything else would hang (including shutdown, reboot, kill, sudo, and ifconfig commands) the inet stopped working and my mouse was invisible, so I rebooted.
This time my display would not activate at all. I waited 20 mins for it to come up, and nothing. at this point I am about to decide that using VMWare is not worth the hassle of getting a computer to work with Linux. I should stick to Virtualbox and Win7 both work just as well, Virtualbox newer versions have advanced 3D support and allow as many processor cores as you physically have (VMWare was limiting me to 2 per VM). The thing I was looking forward to the most about VMWare was the memory pooling, so you could load VMs who’s total RAM assigned was greater than the physical RAM on the machine, since it only gave RAM to a VM when it was needed.
So, now I am in Slax (booted off my USB stick) and have to make emergency repairs to my xorg.conf file (I assume it is the culprit at this point), because I had Kubuntu setup with no bootloader, since I was planning on VMing not multi-booting. Further updates to come… if I get Kubuntu to work, I’ll try BSD again on another HDD and see if anything I learned from Kubuntu helped. If not, I still have my HDD with Win7 sitting on the shelf here next to me.
************update about an hour later…***********
so the Slax Module kndiswrapper (=ndisgtk) was able to load the win XP x64 driver and identify that the device was present. when I clicked the configure network button, it popped up a message “Can’t Start the Network Configureation! No Interface Found”. now… I am starting to wonder if it is not the rtl8190p chipset that is causing my problem, as I have found it correctly identified in Fedora 12, KUbuntu 9.10, and Slax, yet none of them can activate the device for networking. I did note on another page (check the tags for rtl8190p) that I found a website that I think has posted a linux rtl8190 driver, but I am not 100% on that, and have no idea how to add it to the kernel without building my own. AND if I am going to build my own Custom Linux kernel for my machine, I’m gonna need a LOT more time… (when I get up and running on some OS again, and I get back here to add links to this post, I’ll put the link in for that website too).
*******update – an hour after that…*******
Right, thoroughly upset with Ubuntu right now, will not even boot into single user mode, I tried removing the xorg.conf file and still nothing, normal or in single user mode. I can (depending on how my wife reacts to the Cat cable running from her laptop (read “used to be mine”) out of the bedroom, across the hall, and over to the other side of the livingroom…) keep my laptop in bridged mode, I’ve been tinkering and as long as I don’t reboot or touch anything on it (she does not have admin rights and is still in Win7) inet is working on both machines. I only have about 30 more days before I am moving into a new apt (I hope, they still have not called to tell me my application is approved, I don’t know any reason why it wouldn’t, but it normally takes them an hour or 2 when I have gone to other apts, but this place has had 5 days already…) and in the new apt, the router and computer will be side by side, or close enough that you’d never see the cable! so no more wireless needed, until I relocate again…
Anyway, the point of all that ^^^^^ is that I am going to kill KUbuntu and put FreeBSD 8.0 back on my machine…
(I’ll add links after I get a working/bootable computer again)
Right so first off I have to say that it is all my fault I am not currently up and running 100% in FreeBSD 8.0, I agree before anyone else can say it… I’m an idiot. I went out and bought (went out=I hit up newegg.com) a wireless card so I can stop bridging my network connection off my laptop, and I just had to buy an 802.11n dual antena (very cool looking too…) wireless PCI card, one that has a BRAND NEWish CHIPSET that is not currently supported in Linux, or BSD. So, I will gladly bend over and take what’s coming to me for that one… But, it was the same price as the 802.11g card and supports MIMO!! so I think I deserve some brownie points for that…
Well, here is a copy of what I have posted on the DesktopBSD forum (more on that later)
Ok, well I had a nice long post typed out here (twice now, but I copied most of it before I hit the stupid key this time) with lots of details and useless additives; however I hit the stupid “back” button that IBM thought would be a good idea to put on the key board of this laptop right next to the up arrow… and so it is gone.
this will have to be a quick version, minus some heavily laden with porn russian websites (oh! there was also one trying to sell an iphone x-ray vision app too!!!) I can find zero info on this chipset, I have a Encore Electronics ENLWI-NX2 802.11n PCI card, works in Win7 AFTER running their config/setup progy. Shows up in pciconf with class, card, chip, rev, and hdr hex codes, and a vendor and class listing, but nothing else. It shows up in windows as an RTL8190P, I was unsuccessful in finding it in FreeBSD 8.0 x64; but I may have forgotten to capitalize the “R” in Realtek when I grepped the “pciconf -lv” results.
manufacturer product page: http://www.encore-usa.com/product_item.php?region=us&bid=2&pgid=81_2&pid=412
I followed the ndisgen instructions posted in this forum by sqlbsd, and all went well until I tried to load the RTL8190P_sys file, then the system hangs for 3-6 seconds and finally the PC just shut off. So a bit more PC info… I tried running FreeBSD 8.0 x64 first, but did not even find the card listed in pciconf (or dmesg) when I grepped for Realtek (maybe I forgot to capitalize the “R”? but either way I didn’t see it, and although I got KDE setup and it booted to the login screen, I could not log in, the KB and mouse only worked on the console screens, so I came back to DesktopBSD). So, I have a clean DesktopBSD 1.7 x64 install on my machine, only 1 network card and it is this wireless card.
I am going to try the 32bit drivers, the win 2k drivers, and then the vista drivers that shipped with the card. I also have the setup file from the manufacturer’s website DL’d and will check that for a different version. if anyone has any ideas I’d be happy to give them a go. I may try an Ubuntu Live CD to check if it will recognize the card, also puppy linux tends to find wifi cards out of the box, so I may give that a shot and see if I can figure out which drivers they use.
I knew I should have just bought the 802.11g card… but I had to go with the 802.11n just cuz it was the same price… and had MIMO support…
****edit 10 minutes later****
I did notice that the Encore ENLWI-G is listed on the FreeBSD 7.2 Hardware list, so there is hope…****update 8:12pm EST****
So, the newly downloaded drivers from the website were slightly more generic (RTL819xP drivers) but they are 7 months newer, so I tried them. The Win64 failed to convert invalid syntax line 2355 or so, the the winxp2k drivers loaded fine, but failed to create the .ko file. The vista x64 drivers converted with no errors and loaded without crashing the PC; however the system still does not recognize the wireless card. so I guess I move on to something else?
Right, well then… now you know… and we all know what happens after that… (right, if anyone can’t find those russian sites (I searched for “RTL8190 FreeBSD”) I’ll be happy to email you the links… j/k 
) so on to a little more explaining…
As stated in the post I failed to find the wireless card even listed in the installed hardware listing, I am 90% sure at this point I did not capitalize the “R” as that just makes no sense. After which I just dumped the FreeBSD install and went to Desktop BSD, as I have installed DBSD 1.6 previously on this hardware and it had KDE working in under 50 mins with no manual configuring and I was unable to type on the login screen currently in FreeBSD 8.0-RELEASE. So I booted up of my newly minted Desktop BSD disc and away it went. I learned that if you create more than one UFS partition during install that when you reboot you get a “Invalid Partition Table” message instead of your OS. easy fix, don’t make multiple partitions. The OS is up and running at this very second, but without inet access.
So I am off to try an Ubuntu live CD, Fedora Live CD, and a Puppy and or Slax USB bootable File System. In an attempt to find out if any non-windows OS can auto configure or even load the Windows drivers to get that wifi working (I believe I have a post around here somewhere about my HP laptop running Puppy and it finding th ewifi adapter and being able to locate networks, but not able to connect, and Ubuntu 8.x on that same laptop working perfectly with wifi, so we shall see what happens…)
*****quick update, before I even post it… HA! *****
after reading the reviews on the NewEgg site (specifically one from feb 28th), I decided to DL the RTL8192E drivers from the Realtek website, will give them a shot before the other OS’s.
*****update March 12th*****
So, I went ahead and added the lines to /boot/loader.conf to automate the loading of the driver during startup, but I have also been getting the same results with all driver versions. (XP drivers fail to convert, and Vista and 7 drivers convert fine, but the system still refuses to acknowledge the existence of the hardware device after using kldload or even restarting.) I currently have a KUbuntu live CD loaded and an lspci from a terminal screen shows the network controller, states it is a realtek and gives a device of 8190. however, the control panel does not acknowledge a wireless adapter as being present nor does ifconfig show the wireless adapter as being present.
I tried installing ndiswrapper from the cd and attempted to load the windows drivers from there. First I tried running ndiswrapper and it told me it was not installed and to run ndiswrapper-common, when I installed it and tried to run it it told me to install a bunch of other things. All were available except ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 which replied back that it was missing, obsolete, or no longer available, then that it had been replaced by ndiswrapper-common. so I could not run ndiswrapper because I did not have ndiswrapper-utils and could not install it because it was replaced by what I already had? got me, without doing an actual install, the good news is that it completely recognized it, I’ll have to check with an installation if it is already in the newest linux kernel, I have just moved on to Fedora since I do not intend on doind an Ubuntu install if I do not have to.
I booted up the Fedora 12 disc I have and it failed to bring up the KDE GUI. The Vterms were available, and an lspci -v showed the full information on the wireless card, so I am going to try a reboot and see what happens.
Everything came up fine with a reboot, not sure what happend the first time. it is not working; however an lspci -v shows no kernel driver in use. I will need to do some research to find out how to add the driver while running off the Live CD, probably get to that later. been working all day in front of a computer, need to relax my eyes some now.
*************Update 3-17-2010**************
just found this website and I think this is a linux driver for the rtl8190p 802.11n chipset
http://lxr.free-electrons.com/source/drivers/staging/rtl8192e/r8190_rtl8256.c
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