firmware-realtek is missing rtl8188eufw.bin in wheezy

[David Egts]

Kernel 3.18.7+ raspberrypi-bootloader includes the driver r8188eu.ko. r8188eu.ko wants to use firmware file rtl8188eufw.bin. Neither firmware-realtek nor any other Raspbian package includes this file.

root@raspberrypi:~# uname -a
Linux raspberrypi 3.18.7+ #755 PREEMPT Thu Feb 12 17:14:31 GMT 2015 armv6l GNU/Linux
root@raspberrypi:~# dpkg -s firmware-realtek | grep ^Version
Version: 0.36+wheezy.1
root@raspberrypi:~# dpkg -S 8188
raspberrypi-bootloader: /lib/modules/3.18.7-v7+/kernel/drivers/staging/rtl8188eu
raspberrypi-bootloader: /lib/modules/3.18.7+/kernel/drivers/staging/rtl8188eu/r8188eu.ko
raspberrypi-bootloader: /lib/modules/3.18.7+/kernel/drivers/staging/rtl8188eu
raspberrypi-bootloader: /lib/modules/3.18.7-v7+/kernel/drivers/staging/rtl8188eu/r8188eu.ko
root@raspberrypi:~# strings /lib/modules/3.18.7+/kernel/drivers/staging/rtl8188eu/r8188eu.ko | grep fw.bin
rtlwifi/rtl8188eufw.bin

To get it to work, one needs to download the firmware file from elsewhere [1] and copy the file to /lib/firmware/rtlwifi.

Once this is done, the wifi adapter will work.

If the firmware file was included in firmware-realtek, it should work out of the box without needing to do the extra steps of downloading and copying the firmware file.

Looks like rtl8188eufw.bin isn't in wheezy but is in sid...

https://packages.debian.org/stable/kernel/firmware-realtek
https://packages.debian.org/sid/firmware-realtek

Thank you!

[1] https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8188eu/blob/master/rtl8188eufw.bin

[Diederik (didi-debian)]

I can confirm that that file is NOT present in wheezy (it is present in wheezy-backports).
It is present in Jessie though.

[David Egts (david-egts)]

As noted in comment #1, I've also found that it is present in and works with Raspbian Jessie out of the box with no problems.

[Diederik (didi-debian)]

I know :-) I was just on a bug squashing spree.
And the definition of 'Verified' is 'by someone other than the reporter' and I wanted to make that explicit instead of just changing the status.