Is it possible to compile a different wireless chipset driver over the already available one on a Raspberry Pi?

Question

I have a fair amount of expertise in the field of setting up Wireless Ad-Hoc networks with Raspberry Pis. I currently am looking into the possibility of compiling a wireless driver over a preexisting, out-of-the-box driver for a USB dongle.

Scenario

I have LogiLink WL0145N USB dongles of two types of chipsets:

• ones with r8188eu driver
• ones with rt2x00lib driver

From my observations I have found out that the Dongles with r8188eu drivers are notorious in joining an ad-hoc network. They also:

• do not let a user set the T_x power using iwconfig
• do not let a user set the channel parameter using iwconfig
• Initially can be ping'd within the ad-hoc network and mysteriously drop-out of the network and become inaccessible.

So is it possible for instance, to remove the r8188eu drivers from the wireless chipset and compile the rt2x00lib in the Raspberry Pi?

If so are there some useful links or hints to achieve the same.

Answer 1

We as it turns out, compiling a wireless chipset driver is as follows:

1. make sure your system is up-to-date:

      sudo apt update
      sudo apt upgrade
      sudo dist-update
   

2. Install the Kernel Header for raspberry-pi as follows:

       sudo apt install raspberrypi-kernel-headers
   

3. At this point whichever driver module you wish to install (if open source), clone to repository on you pi (here, we take lwfinger rtl8188eu)

       git clone https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8188eu.git
       cd rtl8188eu
       make
       sudo make install
   

These steps are similar for most other firmware modules too.

Note

• Downloading the raspberrypi-kernel-headers will take a little time with no progress updates.

• Source

• It is also worth observing that most of the the Ralink based firmware modules are already available with the the new Jessie distro. This can be observed using :

      sudo apt list firmware-ralink
  

• adding the rt2x00lib and/or r8188eu modules in the /etc/modules does not help changing wireless firmware for the USB dongle. As further tests show that the r8188eu dongles are still highly unreliable for ad-hoc functionality.

• adding options r8188eu rtw_power_mgnt=0 rtw_enusbss=1 rtw_ips_mode=1 in your /etc/modprobe.d/8188eu.conf does very little.