I recently obtained a very inexpensive USB wifi dongle that I am trying to see if I can get to work from a USB port on my desktop PC.
My heart won’t be broken if it doesn’t work (as this PC has a wired connection to a router with Internet access) but I would like to see if this wifi dongle can be made to work on an openSUSE LEAP-15.2 USB install (or on a newer openSUSE if LEAP-15.2 is a waste of time to play with on this).
I note 15.2 is flagged “EOL” (End of Life) and I was planning to update in a couple of weeks to a couple of months, so I could also stop here, and wait until I install LEAP-15.3 and try again.
I also have Tumbleweed on this PC, it doesn’t work on Tumbelweed as a ‘default install’, and I have not tried to find a Tumbleweed driver for this USB wifi dongle.
As to the problem: It simply does not show up in the kde network manager. My reading suggests if a device has correct firmware and driver and if it is properly loaded it should show up in Network Manager.
My guess is the device is mostly detected in hardware, but I don’t have a good driver or its missing firmware or both (or LEAP-15.2 too old or I simply messed up).
The dongle is a non-name brand called “Dual Band USB Adapter 600 (433+150) Mbps wireless speed with 802.11ac”. It is a USB-2.0 device. The packaging states support operating systems including “Linux(Not suitable for Free Driver Adapter)”. I do not know what that Linux comment means. I have tried in this PCs USB-2.0 and 3.0 ports.
Currently the USB dongle is recognized partly (?) by hardware but as noted KDE Network Manager does not see the device.
Some details which I hope may help point to the issue (and perhaps prove if compatible):
lsusb
...
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0bda:c811 Realtek Semiconductor Corp.
The https://linux-hardware.org/index.php?id=usb:0bda-c811 for the 0bda:c811 has only a very limited number of distributions working with this device (Kubunu-22.04 (which has a 5.15 kernel)/Ubuntu 20.04 (which has a 5.4 kernel) and Manjaro-18.1.5 (which has somewhere between a 5.2 and 5.4 kernel)). That link also states “You need to install one of the following additional drivers for the device to work properly”:
-
[brektrou/rtl8821CU](https://github.com/brektrou/rtl8821CU) -
[smp79/rtl8821CU](https://github.com/smp79/rtl8821CU) -
[whitebatman2/rtl8821CU](https://github.com/whitebatman2/rtl8821CU)
Rather than follow those, I tried the official rtl8812au + rtl8812au-kmp-deault packaged with LEAP-15.2 and its 5.3.18-lp152.106-default kernel (which didn’t work for me) and after deleting those also tried rtl8812AU_8821AU-kmp-default packaged by Sauerland (which also have not worked for me). I currently have the Sauerland packaged rtl8812AU_8821AU-kmp-default for LEAP-15.2 installed.
Some more info
corei7:/home/oldcpu # iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
Also hwinfo shows nothing:
corei7:/home/oldcpu # hwinfo --wlan
corei7:/home/oldcpu #
However hwinfo looking for the device does give something:
corei7:/home/oldcpu # hwinfo | grep c811
idProduct = 0xc811
E: ID_MODEL_ID=c811
E: PRODUCT=bda/c811/200
E: PRODUCT=bda/c811/200
<6> 3.104171] usb 2-12: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=c811, bcdDevice= 2.00
Device: usb 0xc811 "802.11ac NIC"
So again my guess is the device is detected, but I don’t have a good driver.
One can see entries in the journal
corei7:/home/oldcpu # journalctl | grep 0bda
May 08 19:15:52 corei7 kernel: usb 2-12: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=c811, bcdDevice= 2.00
and
corei7:/home/oldcpu # journalctl | grep 2-12
May 08 19:15:52 corei7 kernel: usb 2-12: new high-speed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd
May 08 19:15:52 corei7 kernel: usb 2-12: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=c811, bcdDevice= 2.00
May 08 19:15:52 corei7 kernel: usb 2-12: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
May 08 19:15:52 corei7 kernel: usb 2-12: Product: 802.11ac NIC
May 08 19:15:52 corei7 kernel: usb 2-12: Manufacturer: Realtek
May 08 19:15:52 corei7 kernel: usb 2-12: SerialNumber: 123456
May 08 19:15:52 corei7 mtp-probe[564]: checking bus 2, device 4: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb2/2-12"
and noting it uses ‘xhci_hcd’ then I looked at
corei7:/home/oldcpu # journalctl | grep xhci_hcd
May 09 00:21:02 corei7 kernel: xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: xHCI Host Controller
...
May 09 00:21:02 corei7 kernel: xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: xHCI Host Controller
May 09 00:21:02 corei7 kernel: xhci_hcd 0000:00:14.0: new USB bus registered, assigned bus number 4
...
May 08 19:15:52 corei7 kernel: usb 2-12: new high-speed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd
...
and also looked to see if the kernel module xchi_hcd was loaded:
corei7:/home/oldcpu # lsmod | grep xhci_hcd
xhci_hcd 278528 1 xhci_pci
usbcore 311296 10 xhci_hcd,ehci_pci,snd_usb_audio,usbhid,snd_usbmidi_lib,uvcvideo,ehci_hcd,xhci_pci
and checked dmesg
corei7:/home/oldcpu # dmesg | grep 2-12
2.955603] usb 2-12: new high-speed USB device number 4 using xhci_hcd
3.104171] usb 2-12: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=c811, bcdDevice= 2.00
3.104172] usb 2-12: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
3.104173] usb 2-12: Product: 802.11ac NIC
3.104173] usb 2-12: Manufacturer: Realtek
3.104174] usb 2-12: SerialNumber: 123456
also
corei7:/home/oldcpu # rfkill list all
corei7:/home/oldcpu #
Suggestions are welcome.
As noted this won’t break my heart if it is incompatible with LEAP-15.2 nor for that matter with openSUSE, as it was so inexpensive, but I thought I would post here anyway, in case someone can point to something silly I have not tried… (also not that it makes any difference, but secure boot is disabled). … and I can also try with Tumbleweed (immediately) if 15.2 is a waste of time to try due to it being EOL. I could also plug it into my Lenovo laptop which is running LEAP-15.3 (although that laptop has built in wireless already) and test from there.
