Realtek USB WiFi key module 8712u.ko return "Can't read module (...) : exec format error"

Question

I bought a USB WiFi key, the Hercules HWGUm-54. Apparently, the appropriate driver is the RTL8192SU from Realtek. I downloaded it from their website and extracted it.

I then went to the driver folder, extracted the archive and went into it.

As root I did:

Make
cp 8712u.ko /lib/modules/<my_kernel>/kernel/drivers/net/
depmod -a

However I got an error:

WARNING: Can't read module /lib/modules/2.6.38.8-35.fc15.x86_64/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/8712u.ko: Exec format error

Any ideas why?

Answer 1

I finally found the solution, it was just about installing kmod-staging.

I put the exact commands I do here in case someone else is stuck :

yum install kmod-staging
wget http://au.billion.com/downloads/3011N/3011N_Linux_Driver.zip
unzip -j 3011N_Linux_Driver.zip "*rtl8192sfw.bin" -d RTL8192SU
mv RTL8192SU /lib/firmware/

unplug/replug the usb key and voilà! It woks!

Important Note: When you upgrade your system to a new kernel, but didn't had the following kmod-staging update too, if you reboot your computer, your wifi will not work again since the kmod-staging aren't available for that kernel.

Answer 2

Not sure why you got the error, but here's how I did it for a similar piece of hardware.

CD to inside the driver folder, then try:

sudo su
make clean
make config
make
make install

finally, though I think make install does this:

depmod -a

Answer 3

You should have done make install in the source dir, that would have copied the driver to the correct directory. The error message says it: .../drivers/net/wireless. You can try to move it there from the dir where you copied it.