Raspbian + TP Link usb wifi problem

Question

I have a TP-LINK TL-WN725N for my RPi, but I can't get it to work yet.

Trying to login from wpa_gui returns the error "Failed to enable network in wpa_supplicant configuration".

lsusb says Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:8179 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. but no model no or anything.

Then I do lsmod and I see my driver 8192cu 490361 0 so it's there but not used?

iwconfig returns "no wireless extensions" on both lo and eth0 (whatever that means).

This is where I'm stuck, what do I do next? It's my first time on linux.

Also I have no ethernet cable available, so getting updates is difficult until the wifi works, can do it with USB from my laptop though.

Answer 1

The Used by column of lsmod only lists other kernel modules that depend on this one, so a 0 doesn't necessarily mean that the module isn't used.

iwconfig reports lo and eth0 as having no wireless extensions because those are the loopback and ethernet interfaces. The more interesting part is that it doesn't list a device named wlan0 (or similar), so apparently your WLAN adapter is not set up properly.

Since you were referring to the TL-WN725N v2 in another question, you might need the 8188eu kernel module instead of 8192cu. Install it, as outlined there, and try iwconfig again. It should list a WLAN device then.