Error enabling WiFi dongle in linux system

Question

I'm having difficulties for quite awhile enabling a WiFi dongle driver in a Kernel 3.16.1 system. I've managed to install the driver after compiling the kernel (used the modprobe command with no issue) however I'm still getting the following errors:

When executing 'ifconfig wlan1 up' or 'ifup wlan1':

r8188eu 2-3:1.0: Direct firmware load failed with error -2
r8188eu 2-3:1.0: Falling back to user helper
SIOCSIFFLAGS: Operation not permitted
RTNETLINK answers: Operation not permitted

iwconfig:

wlan1 unassociated Nickname:"<WIFI@REALTEK>" Mode:Auto Frequency=2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Sensitivity:0/0
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Encryption key:off Power Management:off Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0 Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

iwlist scan:

wlan1     No scan results

I would greatly appreciate any help in this matter. Obviously /etc/network/interfaces is set correctly since this isn't the first time I've worked with WiFi USB dongles on linux systems. Thank you!

Answer 1

Turns out I was missing the firmware binary of the driver.

Solution:

sudo mkdir /lib/firmware/rtlwifi; sudo wget -O /lib/firmware/rtlwifi/rtl8188efw.bin https://github.com/OpenELEC/wlan-firmware/blob/master/firmware/rtlwifi/rtl8188efw.bin?raw=true

and reboot.