Turris MOX - USB Wifi dongle

Software Turris OS 4.x
1

Dear all,

I am trying USB wifi dongle with Turris MOX A.

Firmware Version: TurrisOS 4.0-alpha1 271973d916 / LuCI branch (git-18.341.41820-c12ec33)
Kernel Version: 4.14.91

What are exact steps to make any of them work on Turris MOX?
Is any of these dongles supported?

lsusb gives…

Ralink RT5370
ID 148f:5370 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT5370 Wireless Adapter

TP-LINK TL-WN725N
ID 0bda:8179 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188EUS 802.11n Wireless Network Adapter

TP-LINK TL-WN722N
ID 2357:010c TP-Link TL-WN722N v2

BTW all these three dongles get detected on my other linux machines.
Command ip link finds interface starting w…

Thank you in advance for any hint.

Regards,
Lukas

2

Wifi dongle in modular router MOX ? What will be the purpose ? Do not use a better WiFi MOX module ? Or dongle in some one router without wifi ? The range of WiFi such chimera will be a tragic. Do not try to search for the dead alleys ?

3

… to make the router compact. I will be also using MOX C module…

1 Like
4

… two of those USB dongles have detachable antenna I plan to replace with a better one.

5

Why make things simple when it goes complicated ? I really don’t understand the meaning of your intention. Module router Debunk with dongle + extern antena

11 × 6 × 2,7 cm MOX A board without wifi
11 x 9 x 2,8 cm MikroTik RB750r2 without wifi
10 x 13 x 2,7 cm Netis-wf2411 with wifi
6 x 6 x 1,8 cm TP-Link TL-WR802N with wifi

I think you must give advice more sensible and smarter than I.

6

How do you want to use it?
As client to connect to an AP? Or as access point itself? Both?

Once you plug a USB wifi in a Linux computer, it get loaded to be used as a client. In a router you may need to configure for AP mode. Not all chipsets support AP mode.

7

As an Access Point. I was already using TP-LINK TL-WN725N in that mode under Linux Mint and Armbian, no issue there.

The problem I have is that none of those dongles get detected as a network device. Command ip link does not find them…

My guess is that it is related to some kernel setup of TurrisOS. But I did not find any relevant guide.

Lukas

8

Hello,

It’s good to check it on https://wikidevi.com/, if it has support for Linux.
You said that you have it working under Linux Mint and Armbian, however, OpenWrt has a different approach to this, it doesn’t ship all kernel drivers by default as they want to be small as it needs to fit devices with min 4MB flash and 32 MB RAM and Turris OS 4.0 is just patchset for OpenWrt.

I don’t have any of those Wi-Fi USB stick dongles, which you have, but I have TP-Link TL-WN722N v1 plugged into Turris 1.1, which was recommended on our old forum.

For it, it was necessary to do the following steps:

  1. update feeds (opkg update) and install package kmod-ath9k-htc in LuCI/CLI.
  2. reboot router
  3. in CLI do this command, so you know that it was detected by the system:
wifi detect
  1. following command will add the output from wifi detect to /etc/config/wireless
wifi detect >> /etc/config/wireless
  1. Setup the Wi-Fi. Which can be done by hand in /etc/config/wireless or in Foris/LuCI.

The method is the same, I chose one of your USB Wi-Fi dongles - ID 2357:010c TP-Link TL-WN722N v2 and was able to find that it uses driver: r8188eu, but I’m not sure, if you can get it working with OpenWrt what I was able to find from this commit, but drivers for RTL8188CU,RTL8188RU should work according to this Makefile.

However, you can try it.

opkg update
opkg install rtl8188eu-firmware

Generally, each Wi-Fi USB stick requires a driver that’s you can find with e.g. lsusb -t and in dmesg (syslog) and some of them may require firmware as well. Also, you can use lsmod in Linux distribution, where it works to see, what is necessary and then download it in OpenWrt.

However, I was able to find some additional information for your first device - Ralink RT5370 and you should get more luck with this device as somebody gets working with OpenWrt.

opkg update
opkg install kmod-rt2x00-usb kmod-rt2800-usb

However, guys, I’d kindly ask you to avoid off-topic as much as possible. Your’s replies here are not useful and I think you’re a good and helpful community, which can help someone, who would have some issue or request how to get it working. Turris MOX is a modular router and open-source so you can do what you want with it. :wink:

1 Like
9

Hi Pepe,

first of all, thank you for good hints.
I did not realize, I should google rather for openwrt than for TurrisOS.

But…

A) wifi detect gives a warning:

WARNING: Wifi detect is deprecated. Use wifi config instead
For more information, see commit 5f8f8a366136a07df661e31decce2458357c167a_

I am not sure, if this is actually an issue…

B) I think that root cause of all problems is that installed modules cannot be loaded.

I did install modules using opkg you have mentioned above.

Restarted the Turris MOX.

On a different machine, I did check that driver rt2800usb for Ralink dongle is used (by command lsusb -t).

But modprobe rt2800usb gives issues that modules rt2800lib, rt2800usb, rt2x00lib and rt2x00usb could not be probed.

rt2800usb is then not listed using command lsmod…

Similarly, for the other dongle, modprobe rtl8xxu is complaining about modules which could not be probed.

10

I have an update.

After a complete reinstall using the newest TurrisOS 4.0-alpha2, Ralink RT5370 started to work.

After steps below, there is a new network interface listed wlan0 and that could be used in foris under wi-fi menu…

opkg update
opkg install kmod-rt2x00-usb kmod-rt2800-usb
reboot
wifi config

No luck with the other two dongles. But at least something…