wifi dongle not working (rtl8712u firmware issue)

Question

I'm trying to connect my Raspberry Pi 2 (Raspbian Jessie, loaded from berryboot) to wifi using my wifi dongle, it's not going as smooth as I had hoped and I'm hoping one of you can help me out.

some more details and undertaken steps:

I plugged in the usb device, couldn't find a wlan so figured i'd reboot for good measure before digging deeper. No success so i did a sudo apt-get update followed by sudo apt-get upgrade. Everything was allready up to date (did my weekly check yesterday allready). still no success so the digging started:

command: lsusb

result:

Bus 001 Device 005: ID 046e:5522 Behavior Tech. Computer Corp.
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 06f8:e032 Guillemot Corp. HWGUm-54 [Hercules Wireless G Ultra Mini Key]
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. SMSC9512/9514 Fast Ethernet Adapter
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard Microsystems Corp.
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

so I know it's being recognized correctly. then I tried dmesg | more

[    3.036107] usb 1-1.2: new high-speed USB device number 4 using dwc_otg
[    3.138633] usb 1-1.2: New USB device found, idVendor=06f8, idProduct=e032
[    3.138658] usb 1-1.2: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[    3.138675] usb 1-1.2: Product: RTL8188S WLAN Adapter
[    3.138691] usb 1-1.2: Manufacturer: Manufacturer Realtek
[    3.138706] usb 1-1.2: SerialNumber: 00e04c000001

[    5.740346] r8712u: module is from the staging directory, the quality is unknown, you have been warned.
[    5.748177] r8712u: register rtl8712_netdev_ops to netdev_ops
[    5.748220] usb 1-1.2: r8712u: USB_SPEED_HIGH with 4 endpoints
[    5.749442] usb 1-1.2: r8712u: Boot from EFUSE: Autoload OK
[    5.760546] smsc95xx 1-1.1:1.0 eth0: hardware isn't capable of remote wakeup
[    6.293467] usb 1-1.2: r8712u: CustomerID = 0x0000
[    6.293499] usb 1-1.2: r8712u: MAC Address from efuse = 00:08:d3:90:bb:a3
[    6.293518] usb 1-1.2: r8712u: Loading firmware from "rtlwifi/rtl8712u.bin"
[    6.294163] usbcore: registered new interface driver r8712u
[    6.295041] usb 1-1.2: Direct firmware load for rtlwifi/rtl8712u.bin failed with error -2
[    6.295069] usb 1-1.2: r8712u: Firmware request failed

Note that on line 4 it says RTL8188S, while there is an issue with firmware R8712u. is this normal that the name doesn't match? or is this 2 different issues?

when i sudo iwconfig

lo        no wireless extensions.
eth0      no wireless extensions.

and when i sudo iwlist wlan0 scanning

wlan0     Interface doesn't support scanning.

when checking nano /etc/network/interfaces i see the following:

# Static network configuration handled by Berryboot
iface eth0 inet manual

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

anyone have any clue?

edit: doing some more digging, is it possible that running raspbian through berryboot might be the issue?

update: i've modified the file /etc/network/interfaces and /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf to the original as suggested here How do I set up networking/WiFi/static IP address? no luck though but more clues!

command: sudo ifup wlan0

result:

wpa_supplicant: /sbin/wpa_supplicant daemon failed to start
run-parts: /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wpasupplicant exited with return code 1
Failed to bring up wlan0.

Answer 1

I've managed to "fix" the issue I was having. My aim was to use the wifi adapter on my raspberry pi zero and was using my raspberry pi 2 to test the connection. As mentioned above, there were some issues. I’m pretty sure it has something to do with Berryboot since I installed Rasbian Jessie on my raspberry pi zero and the wifi worked like a charm on the first try. Please note, there is a light on the dongle that I didn’t remember and it did NOT light up while connected to the raspberry pi 2.

I hope this helps anyone who happens to stumble upon this post. My suggestions would be:

• Remove berryboot
• Install the newest rabian Jessie image
• Plug & play :)