Paul Smith writes:
On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 9:22 PM, Sam Varshavchik
<mrsam(a)courier-mta.com>
wrote:
>> >> TP-LINK TL-WN821N
>> >
>> >
>> > Can you post output of lsmod and lsusb. Have you installed the firmware
>> > for the device into /lib/firmware? If the device is supported by the
>> > kernel you won't be able to load the module without the firmware
>> > installed.
>> >
>> > Google is your friend.
>>
>> Thanks, Terry.
>
> Why do you believe you need to install some kind of a driver? From the
> below, it looks like your card is an atheros chip-based one, and you have a
> bunch of ath9 modules loaded.
>
> What exactly is or is not working for you.
Well, I plug the the USB device and nothing happens. According to the
manual, a led should be turned on when I plug the USB.
That may not mean anything. These kinds of idiot lights are often software
controlled. My laptop has a built-in idiot light for it's built-in wireless
cards. It obediently lights up when I boot Windows. It stays off in Fedora.
Maybe in blinks occasionally, but wireless works just fine. The kernel
driver, I guess, doesn't bother to turn on the idiot light, when it
initializes the adapter.
The most important thing is whether NetworkManager claims to see a wireless
interface, and gives you a list of available access points your wireless
card is hearing, and not whether some idiot light comes on.
A good source of clues is to look at what gets written into
/var/log/messages, when you plug in the card.