Wireless card TP-Link TL-WN-353GD

wireless card TP-Link TL-WN-353 GD on a debian linux, lenny
lspci shows 00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8185 IEEE 802.11a/b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 20)

driver isssues

first, my debian lenny (02/2010) loads the kernel module called 8180.ko /lib/modules/2.6.26-2-686/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtl8180.ko

this driver works, but the signal strengh is shown as not very stable. so i downloaded the proprietary | driver.

what i got was: rtl8185_linux_26.1031.1207.2009.release.tar.gz

after unpacking and entering the directory i had to type a "make" and a "make install" to install the new kernel module: /lib/modules/2.6.26-2-686/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/r8185b.ko

now i had to make sure, that the correct kernel-module is loaded by boot-time.

so i put r8185b into /etc/modules

and to prevent the wrong kernel module to be loaded i hat to wipe out the line

[...] /lib/modules/2.6.26-2-686/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtl8180.ko [...]

in the file

/lib/modules/2.6.26-2-686/modules.dep

warning: if you run the command depmod this line will be inserted into modules.dep again.

configuring wlan:

for wpa2 i had to create /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant eapol_version=1 ap_scan=1

network={ ssid="" scan_ssid=01 proto=WPA2 key_mgmt=WPA-PSK pairwise=CCMP TKIP group=CCMP TKIP priority psk=b91de39bff571eac2f1108132235423445123271a4c79d4db309b9f345234536a9ed5c }

with the command wpa_passphrase you can create the encrypted passphrase for the config-file shown above.

and in /etc/network/interfaces

auto wlan0 iface wlan0 inet dhcp wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf