Tenda WiFi Dongle - Trying to get Internet Access

I would appreciate some help with my Pi please. I am trying to connect a WiFi Dongle to the Pi, but so far I haven't had any success (I have looked at various posts on the forums hoping to find the right answer, but it's all been a bit trial and error). I am a Linux and Pi beginner and I am not sure what I need to do to get the dongle working. I am using a separate powered USB hub and the dongle lights up when plugged in, but there's no Internet connection on my Pi.

I am using Debian 2012-06-18-wheezy-beta as the operating system.

I bought the dongle from a website called modmypi, but there's only instructions and a driver for Windows. The following links displays all the specifications for the dongle (the make is Tenda):

https://www.modmypi.com/shop/raspberry- ... rk-adapter

I am not sure if I need to provide my IP address on here. I entered ifconfig in the terminal on Ubuntu (I am a new convert to Ubuntu) and this is what is displayed next to wlan0: 192.168.0.4

Any help would be really appreciated.

Thanks.

You bought it from ModMyPi, I assume they can give you very specific instructions to set it up with a Raspberry Pi. Have you asked them?

If somebody is making a profit from the work of a charitable organisation and the voluntary community, it would be very bad form if they do not provide some sort of basic service to their customers.

It seems like it connects to the network, since there is an IP address. Can you do a ping for google.com or some other domain (raspberrypi.org? )?

Sorry, I may have not made myself clear. I obtained the IP address using my main PC and a seperate dongle plugged in there (not the Tenda dongle).

I did contact the company modmypi and they gave me some links to the Raspberry Pi website, they also said that they are working on a set of instructions - that was over a week ago and so far nothing has been produced.

Hi,

I'm using exactly the same wifi dongle, and it works nicely. First thing to do is install the firmware-ralink package with sudo apt-get install firmware-ralink. Once this is installed, plug in the dongle, and then use lsusb to check that it's recognised. You can also use iwlist scan to make sure that the dongle can 'see' your wireless network.

Once you've got this far, you need to edit your /etc/network/interfaces file to give the wlan0 interface an ip address, subnet mask etc., and also set the wireless authentication parameters. There's loads of useful sources of information on the net for this - without knowing your setup, I won't recommend any particular configuration as it may only serve to lead you up the garden path! It is, however, essential to put the authentication part of the file *after* the addressing part. Took me ages to find that out...

Once this is done, issue the command ifup wlan0, and hopefully, things should spring into life

Thanks, I will have a go at the weekend.

Step by step guide for installing the Tenda W311U wireless adaptor.

Sorry about the delay, we've been super busy trying to get our case pre-orders out

Hi Jacob,

Thank you for the step by step instructions. I sent a message via your blog, but I thought I should use the forum just incase you miss the other message. I followed the instructions exactly as given and everything seemed to go well. I turned the Raspberry Pi completely off, removed the LAN and booted up again, but the GUI isn't displayed near the clock (bottom right hand corner). I am using Debian Wheezy as the operating system. Do you have any other suggestions/ideas please?

Thanks.

Sounds like you've got the dongle registered as a USB device, so that's the hard part over.

Could be a problem with Gnome and Wheezy? You could try installing KDE as an alternative and see how that goes. http://wiki.debian.org/WiFi/HowToUse#KDE

Alternatively use Debian until a stable Wheezy OS is released?

I'll have a play over the weekend and see if I can come to a solution.

ModMyPi

Just a note to say that these instructions have helped me in getting connected and test out 2 other dongles containing Ralink chips. There are lots of posts on the forum regarding wireless, and the instructions here were the simplest I've found, and the only ones that have worked for me so far. Others may need to get the connection from the command line without running startx in which case this may not be the solution for them - but at least the dongle / pi connection is easily tested this way for compatability. My dongles are 2573 (Edimax EW-7318Ug) and 2070 (TP-Link TL-WN321G).

Thank you to everyone who replied to my question about setting up my WiFi dongle. I managed to get it working and everything now seems fine.

Hi,

I'm using exactly the same wifi dongle, and it works nicely. First thing to do is install the firmware-ralink package with sudo apt-get install firmware-ralink. Once this is installed, plug in the dongle, and then use lsusb to check that it's recognised. You can also use iwlist scan to make sure that the dongle can 'see' your wireless network.

Once you've got this far, you need to edit your /etc/network/interfaces file to give the wlan0 interface an ip address, subnet mask etc., and also set the wireless authentication parameters. There's loads of useful sources of information on the net for this - without knowing your setup, I won't recommend any particular configuration as it may only serve to lead you up the garden path! It is, however, essential to put the authentication part of the file *after* the addressing part. Took me ages to find that out...

Once this is done, issue the command ifup wlan0, and hopefully, things should spring into life

Thank you for your suggestion, I will try tonight or tomorrow

The thread is 8 months old and if you are using Raspbian latest version, the firmware will not be the same as Linux uses ARMHF not ARMEL now..

[plugwash]

The firmware for a wifi controller has nothing to do with whether the code running on the arm is using the hard float or the soft-float ABI.

Wheezy (both debian and raspbian) has a newer version than squeeze but that shouldn't affect the validity of the instructions nr gave.