Installing wireless driver (realtek 8188CE) on

Debian wheezy
I had a hard time installing the wireless driver for my debian. My debian
was Sqeeze but soon after I realized Wheezy was the one to support my
wireless adapter, realtek 8188CE,I upgraded to wheezy. Here is my
sources.list file:
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib
non-free
deb-src http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/ wheezy main contrib
non-free
deb http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main contrib
non-free
deb-src http://security.debian.org/ wheezy/updates main
contrib non-free

I followed the exact steps listed on the Debian wiki. At step 4, after I typed
in iwconfig,there was no tag for wifi (shouldn't it be there?), I figured the
wifi module was not loaded, but I didn't know how to check and add it
up vote 4
Here is my printout:
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clint@Thinkpad-W520:~$ lspci | grep -i wifi
03:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
RTL8188CE
802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter (rev 01)

The iwconfig output:

lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
pan0 no wireless extensions.

linux debian drivers wifi

edited Sep 27 '12 at asked Sep 27 '12 at
22:54 3:16
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Gilles Cong Hui
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2 Answers
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It went perfect for me:

For starters list what pci devices are currently present

% lspci
....
07:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n WiFi Adapter (rev 01)
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 05)

Modify /etc/apt/sources.list
% deb http://http.us.debian.org/debian testing main contrib
non-free

install updates
% apt-get update

up vote
install realtek & wireless tools
2 down
vote
% apt-get install firmware-realtek wireless-tools

confirm wirelss is working

% iwconfig
wlan0

IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any

Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated
TxPower=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7
RTS thr=2347 B
Fragment
thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
eth0

no wireless extensions.

edited Jan 16 '13 at

7:05

answered Jan 15 '13 at

22:18

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slm
user30349
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Just a note for anyone reading this, Wheezy used to be the testing branch
at the time this answer was written. Nowadays, Wheezy is the stable
branch so testing in /etc/apt/sources.list up there would refer to

Jessie. Joseph R. Sep 14 '13 at 0:21

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Never for any reason should be mixed repositories from Debian stable with
up vote 0
testing branch. However you can add in your repositories backport repository
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and then you can get a newer kernel to work with RTL8188CE Realtek
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