On 01/02/13 16:18, Rowan Berkeley wrote: > On 01/02/13 15:54, Paula Graham wrote: >> I dunno, doesn't seem a huge burden to me - the driver's in a handy >> folder - it takes all of 20 secs to compile - prefer it to opening a >> brand new laptop with a perfectly good Realtek chip (and I'm clumsy >> with hardware). Will just tolerate mild inconvenience, upgrade when >> 13.04 comes out with kernel 3.8 and native driver - problem solved, >> feisty laptop with no MS tax for under £400 ;) Paula > > Well, then, Paula, may I request you write a Wireless Installation > Wizard, of as general application as possible, ie providing guidance > for everybody with a converted machine and no wireless, with all the > commands listed verbatim, for those of us confused by the scrappy and > conflicting instructions on how to do it that are scattered across > Ubuntu Forums? For my part, I have downloaded a copy of "The Linux > Command Line" by William E Shotts, which will gradually teach me how > to do all this for myself. I stress: gradually
OK sorry - it sounds grim but it's really easy to compile it once you've managed to find the wretched driver in the first place. Verbatim instructions plus chatty asides below cos it's Friday and I'm about to quit for the week wheeeeeeee! If your chip's the same as mine it's easy cos I know where the driver is, if not, you'll have to track it down (if I happen to read my email lists at the time I'll help). First you have to find out which wireless chip you have. Open a shell (ctl+alt+t) type: lspci at the prompt - it'll spit out a list of PCI devices among which the ID of your wifi chip should be found. It might not say 'wifi' but it's the networking chip that *isn't* ethernet. Google with the chip's model for the driver. On my Zoostorm, lspci lists the driver like this: 02:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 8723 So in my case I googled this string: "realtek 8723 driver linux" and found a bunch of people disagreeing confusingly in various forums - after reading and inwardly digesting I gleaned that there are currently two versions of the driver, one for kernel 3.2 and one for kernel 3.5. To find out which one you want, do this command to find out which kernel you have: uname -r To which my Ubuntu 12.04 replies: 3.2.0-37-generic (No, Alan, I'm not going to upgrade my kernel to a release candidate for 3.8 on my main production laptop lol - I'm going to wait for Ubuntu 13.04) So this means I need the kernel 3.2 driver Found this driver in a very helpful person's post at the bottom of the page here: http://askubuntu.com/questions/139632/wireless-card-realtek-rtl8723ae-bt-is-not-recognized - it's shared in someone's Dropbox but there's testimony from someone who'd already used the driver without having their laptop eaten by monsters so I downloaded it. I can confirm that no disaster occurred after installing it. If your chip is the same, type this command in your terminal to download it and unpack it (it's all one line, the email is wrapping it): wget -O- http://dl.dropbox.com/u/57056576/DRIVERS/REALTEK/rtl_92ce_92se_92de_8723ae_linux_mac80211_0006.0514.2012.tar.gz | tar -xz Once you've got your mitts on the driver the hard bit is done and you won't have to do it again as long as you still have kernel 3.2 (this probably won't change on Ubuntu 12.04 - the upgrades are incremental but the version stays the same). Now change directory to the driver's folder with th 'cd' command: cd /path/to/driver The real command will probably look something like this because the driver folder has a somewhat overly informative name: cd /home/myname/Downloads/rtl_92ce_92se_92de_8723ae_linux_mac80211_0006.0514.2012 Once you're in there, type these commands one by one, waiting till Ubuntu finishes chewing each command: sudo make sudo make install Then do this command to make Ubuntu load it (it'll load automatically on subsequent reboots): sudo modprobe rtl8723e And you're done. Ubuntu immediately starts scanning for the network. On subsequent recompiles, assuming you kept the driver folder, all you have to do is change to the folder and run just the 3 simple commands: make, make-install and modprobe rtl8723e - if you can't remember the module number (I can't!) the commands should still be loitering about in the BASH history - scroll up with the up key till you find them or just make a note of the command somewhere so you can just paste it in again ;) If stuck, this command: lsmod | grep wifi will give you the driver module's ID: rtl8723e It's mildly annoying but pretty quick. Any attempt to automate it IMHO will most likely result in a wasted afternoon smacking your forehead against the wall plus possible remedial cos you've made a mess. Or you can take Alan's advice and upgrade your kernel to 3.8 release candidate and see if the driver's really there, for the good of the community ;) So, less confusingly chatty recap: 1. find and download the driver 2. change to driver's folder in a terminal 3. sudo make 4. sudo make-install 5. sudo modprobe [module ID] Paula -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.ubuntu.com/UKTeam/
