Difficulty setting up WiFi dongle

I haven't had any time to spend on this for the last few days,

so the lack of replies hasn't slowed me down at all. ;-)

I moved the Raspberry Pi to the room where the modem/router is, so I

could use an ethernet cable to connect the two together. Now the set-up is like as below

Connected to Raspberry Pi:

          USB Hub: CP technologies powered 7  port hub

          Screen: LG M1962D, HDMI and 3.5mm audio

          Router: SFR box, through ethernet cable

          Connected to USB hub:

                    Logitech trackball and Casino AZERTY keyboard

                    SanDisk Cruzer 4GB USB key

Power on, and the desktop appears; the digital clock in the panel is

already set to the correct time and date.

Start Midori, point it at http://news.bbc.co.uk and the News site appears.

Plug SanDisk media player (running Rockbox) into the USB hub;

both the internal memory and the micro SD card are detected.

There seem to be no player applications installed yet.

Plug the LM006 WiFi dongle into the Rapsberry Pi's remaining USB port; the computer reboots!

Everything is detected again and the clock is correct again.

Start Midori; the BBC news page was remembered in the history and loads again.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ lsusb

Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9512 Standard Microsystems Corp.

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp.

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:8176 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188CUS 802.11n WLAN Adapter

Bus 001 Device 005: ID 05e3:0608 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB-2.0 4-Port HUB

Bus 001 Device 006: ID 05e3:0608 Genesys Logic, Inc. USB-2.0 4-Port HUB

Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0781:7421 SanDisk Corp. Sansa E200 Series (msc)

Bus 001 Device 008: ID 0781:5530 SanDisk Corp. Cruzer

Bus 001 Device 009: ID 1a2c:0021 

Bus 001 Device 010: ID 046d:c408 Logitech, Inc. Marble Mouse (4-button)

Send the output from dmesg to a text file to make things easier to find.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ dmesg >> /media/C816-B6DA/dmesg.txt

Now looking in that file...

[    3.423344] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 4 using dwc_otg

[    3.555362] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=8176

[    3.567389] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3

[    3.579823] usb 1-1.2: Product: 802.11n WLAN Adapter

[    3.589853] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Realtek

[    3.599162] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: 00e04c000001

Look at which kernel modules are loaded.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ lsmod

Module                  Size  Used by

snd_bcm2835            12808  0

snd_pcm                74834  1 snd_bcm2835

snd_seq                52536  0

snd_timer              19698  2 snd_seq,snd_pcm

snd_seq_device          6300  1 snd_seq

snd                    52489  5 snd_seq_device,snd_timer,snd_seq,snd_pcm,snd_bcm2835

snd_page_alloc          4951  1 snd_pcm

8192cu                485042  0

evdev                   8682  8

joydev                  9102  0

Use Midori to do a "duck duck go" search for "RTL8188CUS" finds me a page on raspberrypi.org.

http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=6256

This has an automated script to set up Realtek RTL8188CUS based wifi adapters.

          "The instructions are available at: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/80256631/install-rtl8188cus.txt

          and the script at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/80256631/install-rtl8188cus.sh"

Download the script and save it to the boot SD card.

pi@raspberrypi ~ $ sudo wget http://dl.dropbox.com/u/80256631/install-rtl8188cus-latest.sh \

-O /boot/install-rtl8188cus-latest.sh

Resolving dl.dropbox.com (dl.dropbox.com)... 23.21.249.25

Connecting to dl.dropbox.com (dl.dropbox.com)|23.21.249.25|:80... connected.

HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK

Length: 58361 (57K) [text/x-sh]

Saving to: `/boot/install-rtl8188cus-latest.sh'

100%[============================================================>] 58,361       197K/s   in 0.3s   

2013-03-25 10:41:21 (197 KB/s) - `/boot/install-rtl8188cus-latest.sh' saved [58361/58361]

Looking in the instructions there is this worrying warning

          "If you are installing your first wifi adapter or adding a new wifi adapter to a Pi that

          already has a different one installed the driver should be installed BEFORE plugging in the

          new wifi adapter.

          DO NOT PLUG IN THE WIFI ADAPTER UNTIL ASKED TO - LOOK AT THE SCREEN OUTPUT FOR INSTRUCTIONS."

The last time I tried to plug in the WiFi dongle while the Pi was running, it rebooted…

so I'm naturally wary of doing that again.

Well, I've downloaded the script, I'll take a quick look and do as the instructions say, at the risk of

rebooting the Raspberry Pi like the previous time. But to try to avoid that, I'll plug it into the

hub, rather than directly into the Pi's USB port.