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Jonas Czech
Asked: 2019-12-14 09:13:13 +0800 CST

How to add the ID of a known-compatible device to a USB wifi driver (or: making "echo new_id" permanent)?

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I have a somewhat uncommon USB WiFi device (in my case, a Hawking HWDN1), which, after doing the following, works with the rt2800usb driver already in the kernel:

sudo modprobe rt2800usb
sudo bash -c "echo 0e66 0004 > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/rt2800/new_id"

I'm manually loading the driver (modprobe), and then "binding" it to the device, i.e. telling it that it does indeed support that particular device (by the device id)

Unfortunately, this doesn't stick beyond a reboot. Is there a neat way (i.e. perhaps with a way other than just running a script on boot) to make it permanent?

Or, even better, how would I go about submitting the USB device ID to the maintainers of the rt2800usb driver, so that it "just works" for everyone with the same device? A quick look through the driver source, confirms that my device is not in the device table (towards the middle of the file), however very simar ones (similar device id) are there - so that seems to suggest that I could just add the device id and it would "just work" for everyone - but I'm not sure.

wireless drivers kernel contributing realtek-wireless

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    The usual way to get a new usb.id included is to file a bug report. https://bugs.launchpad.net/ It may take some time to be released.

    I suggest this method to add the usb.id to the usual new_id part of the driver.

    Remove the device and in a terminal, do:

    sudo nano /etc/udev/rules.d/network_drivers.rules

    Add one long line:

    ACTION=="add", SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="0e66", ATTR{idProduct}=="0004", RUN+="/sbin/modprobe -qba rt2800usb"

    Caps, brackets, punctuation, etc. are crucial. Proofread twice, save and close nano. Next:

    sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/network_drivers.conf

    Add one long single line:

    install rt2800usb /sbin/modprobe --ignore-install rt2800usb $CMDLINE_OPTS; /bin/echo "0e66 0004" > /sys/bus/usb/drivers/rt2800usb/new_id

    Proofread twice, save and close nano. Insert the device. If it doesn't start immediately, you might have to do:

    sudo modprobe rt2800usb

    A quick look through the driver source, confirms that my device is not in the device table

    If it were in the device table in the driver included in your currently installed kernel version, then the driver would have recognized the device and driven it without any input from you.

    You can confirm with:

    modinfo rt2800usb | grep 0004

    It will produce nothing as the usb.id is not in the driver yet.

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