Second wifi interface not working (USB dongle, driver missing?)

General system Newbie
#1

Hello guys,

I am not generally new to Linux but I fully switched to EndeavourOS now and I am now stuck at a point where i need to rebuild my setup i was using before on a Windows machine.

I have a built in wifi card that is actually recognized as wlan0 and also works like it should. When I plug in my USB wifi dongle it is pretty strange that it showed up under iwconfig but not at ifconfig. I played around a little bit and now at least the “wlan1” is gone and it is recognized as wwp0s… in iwconfig and ifconfig.

Using ifconfig up/down also seems to work. When using iwconfig it shows me for the wwp0s… adapter “no wireless extensions”.

How can i get this thing up and running and connect them to two different networks. And how can I priorize which one to use? I really need the second one only for a specific application I can assign it to.

Some outputs:

lsusb

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 148f:3070 Ralink Technology, Corp. RT2870/RT3070 Wireless Adapter

ifconfig

enp0.....: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        ether e8:6a:64:79:c6:52  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0
        device interrupt 16  memory 0xe9200000-e9220000  

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 1000  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 6799  bytes 606876 (592.6 KiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 6799  bytes 606876 (592.6 KiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

wlan0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.2.130  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.2.255
        inet6 fd91:dab6:a2b2:1:1905:4531:a8da:5e4  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x0<global>
        inet6 fe80::b982:1565:8966:cdf9  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>
        ether a0:a4:c5:b2:d3:c4  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 3549818  bytes 4396145043 (4.0 GiB)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 1721301  bytes 232738326 (221.9 MiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

wwp0....: flags=4227<UP,BROADCAST,NOARP,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        ether 4a:71:80:a3:ca:9f  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 34  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 60  bytes 7692 (7.5 KiB)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

iwconfig

lo        no wireless extensions.

enp0....  no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11  ESSID:"MY_WIFI_NAME"  
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:5.58 GHz  Access Point: E0:60:66:AB:13:06   
          Bit Rate=866.7 Mb/s   Tx-Power=22 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=55/70  Signal level=-55 dBm  
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:3361   Missed beacon:0

wwp0....  no wireless extensions.

Already tried modprobe with rt2800usb but this didnt work. Any experts here that can help me out? :slight_smile:

#2

Hello @petrol
I guess i have to ask the following question. If your system has a built in wifi card working then why do you need the usb wifi dongle?

#3

Hi ricklinux,

as I mentioned above I need the second interface to connect to a different network at home. This adapter will only be used by another tool and not for the whole system.

In Windows this worked pretty well with just 2 network adapters and i could switch them in the network manager selecting the network to connect to. I dont need a GUI at all it just should work on Linux somehow too. :smiley:

#4

In network cpnnection setup where you config setup you can select the usb’ ? There should be somewhere a drop menu which device you want to use

#5

Yes, I guess you did say that. Anyway your usb wifi dongle is a Ralink RT2870/RT3070. This particular chip is supposed to work from a kernel module that should load automatically. rt28000usb
I didn’t see any wifi in the info you listed. With the wifi dongle plugged in and boot up the computer can you see what modules it lists with the following command. It may be that you need to blacklist some modules as it is getting bumped out. Post the output of this command.

lsmod

Also what does this show?

lspci -k

And also

ip link