How do I install the drivers for my raspberry pi's wifi dongle?

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I have a nice "Resource CD", with a setup.exe and loads of drivers and other file, but in the Linux Drivers folder there is just a URL, which lets you download a file that unzips to an .img file.

Now every person in the linux world has a different idea or technique for what to do with the file. Some say mount it, some say extract files from it. What would I do with them if I couldn't find them? The only thing I can think of is to put them somewhere special for drivers on the boot SD card, either before installing Rasbian, so the installer knows what to do, or put them in some special place on the card after installing the OS.

So, I ask you, what do I do with them, or rather it, the .img file.

What I have tried:

I've gone through umpteen tutorials and examples, to configure wlan0, essentially what uses the wifi dongle, and nothing worked. You would think there should be a driver and all, and you just go apt-get install wifi.dongle, but no siree. There were a few apt-gets, but nothing to do - directly - with the dongle itself. It looks like the Pi just doesn't see it.

Posted 30-Aug-16 21:08pm

Brady Kelly

Updated 30-Aug-16 23:24pm

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Jochen Arndt · Answer 1 · 2016-08-30T23:24:00

With Linux, drivers are related to the used kernel. That means that the driver binary has to be build for the specific kernel in use.

Therefore, Linux distributions include already drivers for many hardware.

But problems arise when using a brand new or exotic hardware that is not supported by your distribution. Than you have two options:

Build the driver for your kernel.
Use an image provided by the hardware manufacturer.

The first option requires some knowledge about the Linux kernel and modules, and about the required utilities (GCC, make). See for example http://www.tldp.org/LDP/lkmpg/2.6/html/x181.html[^] and Compile kernel module - ArchWiki[^]. Note that the module must be rebuild each time when updating the kernel (e.g. by a Rapsbian update).

The second option requires installing the provided image (if a Raspbian image is availabe) by coyping it to the SD card which replaces your existing Raspbian. This is often not the best option because such images are usually not often updated. The update mechanism of Raspbian can't be used for kernel updates because that would not update the driver module.

Therefore, you should check if specific hardware is supported by your distribution before buying it. For the Raspberry Pi see RPi USB Wi-Fi Adapters - eLinux.org[^].

Because you have it already, just plug it in when power is off, power on, and check the log file /var/log/kern.log. It should provide information if a driver module has been loaded or an unknown device has been detected.

As last resort you can try to find information in the web about your hardware. Search for the device name with Linux and/or Raspberry / Raspbian. If the above log file contain some information (especially USB VID and PID or a device name) include that too or use it instead of the initial used device name.