• From: The Chatsubo
  • Registered: 2010-04-03
  • Posts: 778

Topic: [Solved] Help Getting Wireless Working, Please :-)

Hey All :-)

I just performed a new install of Statler Alpha 2. During the text install, I got a message regarding some missing firmware, which I didn't understand at the time. As I didn't have any clue what this was about, I just proceeded without installing anything.

Anyway, it turns out that this must have been relating to drivers for my WNIC (Belkin Wireless G USB Network Adapter) as I have no internet.

I DuckDuckGo'd around a bit and discovered that my WNIC uses the ZyDAS chipset, and found a project on SourceForge (http://sourceforge.net/projects/zd1211/) that I should be able to use. I was able to confirm this by looking at dmesg output, which stated:

[  114.931551] usb 1-4: firmware: requesting zd1211/zd1211b_ub
[  114.937526] usb 1-4: Could not load firmware file zd1211/zd1211b_ub. Error number -2
[  114.937539] zd1211rw 1-4:1.0: couldn't load firmware. Error number -2
[  115.004679] usb 1-4: firmware: requesting zd1211/zd1211b_ub
[  115.010630] usb 1-4: Could not load firmware file zd1211/zd1211b_ub. Error number -2
[  115.010643] zd1211rw 1-4:1.0: couldn't load firmware. Error number -2

In the included README, I'm told to copy the zd1211_* files to /lib/firmware/zd1211, so I tried that. At first, I got a message back informing me that the zd1211 directory didn't exist, so I cd'd to /lib/firmware and did

sudo mkdir zd1211
sudo cp zd1211_* /lib/firmware/zd1211

At this point, the files seemed to be in the correct place, so I rebooted, but still no joy.

I'm thinking this may be some sort of permissions problem, as, when I use a root Thunar so browse the /lib/firmware/zd1211 directory, I'm not able to right-click and select 'properties' (the option is greyed out).

I'd love it if someone could point me in the right direction!

Last edited by safetycopy (2010-07-30 19:19:26)

"Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?" Walt Whitman, 'To You'.
  • Registered: 2008-11-25
  • Posts: 4,363

Re: [Solved] Help Getting Wireless Working, Please :-)

In a terminal

sudo rm -rf /lib/firmware/zd1211
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install zd1211-firmware

http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/zd1211-firmware

  • From: The Chatsubo
  • Registered: 2010-04-03
  • Posts: 778

Re: [Solved] Help Getting Wireless Working, Please :-)

Great - that did it! Thanks omns :-)

"Stranger, if you passing meet me and desire to speak to me, why should you not speak to me? And why should I not speak to you?" Walt Whitman, 'To You'.
  • Registered: 2008-11-25
  • Posts: 4,363

Re: [Solved] Help Getting Wireless Working, Please :-)

omns wrote:

In a terminal

sudo rm -rf /lib/firmware/zd1211
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install zd1211-firmware

http://packages.debian.org/squeeze/zd1211-firmware

Just for the reference of others. If you haven't already tried to install this firmware, it's not necessary to run the first command in this sequence.