Cannot enable wireless adapter in Fedora 14

Question

I have a lenovo ThinkPad running Fedora 14, and am unable to enable wireless. Fn+F5 doesn't switch on the LED indicator light, and adding a network via System->Network Connections->Wireless doesn't do anything (not that I expect it to with the wireless adapter evidently off).

I saw the following question: Fedora 14 wifi card wont enable

but it seems like I may have a different problem because lspci shows the following:

lspci | grep Realtek
03:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8191SEvB Wireless LAN Controller (rev 10)

How can I troubleshoot this problem? It seems like it ought to be straightforward to enable wireless network access on a thinkpad running Fedora.

Answer 1

I agree with the solution above. I have a Lenovo T510 and I was looking for these wireless drivers for the last few hours. My Wireless specs are: "Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8191SEvB Wireless LAN Controller" If you are unsure type lspci and look for 'Network Controller' in the list that will appear.

I have Fedora 14 and even though I get Internet via wired connection out of the box, the wireless was not recognised. I found the above compressed file on the Internet. Here's a link: Drivers Download Site

Just note that it doesn't have a 'build' directory and it may fail when you first try to install. If so just run the following two commands and try again:

yum install kernel-headers kernel-devel
yum groupinstall "Development Tools"

Then try again installing the drivers. After you extract the compressed file go to its root directory:

cd /your/path/to/rtl8192se_linux_2.6.0019.1207.2010

and install the drivers. After a restart, the wireless should be up and running.

make
make install
reboot

I hope you find the above useful.

Answer 2

I eventually solved this by installing a driver that was slightly different from my hardware, but it worked anyway. I downloaded rtl8192se_linux_2.6.0019.1207.2010.tar.gz and built and installed the drivers, and it seems to work fine.