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SDsolar
Asked: 2018-04-19 18:14:35 +0800 CST

How to add 802.11ac adapter for 5 GHz WiFi (RTL8811AU )

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Plugging in a Dual-Band WiFi adapter with the Realtek RTL8811AU chipset does nothing visible and it does not show up in ifconfig even after a reboot.

Clearly the drivers must be installed separately.

--> I previously verified the precise model of adapter in Device Manager on a Win7 system using the same adapter. This is important because there are several types of RTL8811 chips.

The driver disk has a directory of Linux files on it that I do not recognize as working with Ubuntu.

Google leads here:

Ubuntu 16.04 8811AU Wireless driver (Medium.com)

which says to do this (paraphrased):

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic build-essential git
git clone https://github.com/abperiasamy/rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux.git
(Enter username and password for Github)
cd rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe 8812au

and all seems to work until that final command, where I get the error message

modprobe: FATAL: Module 8812au not found in directory /lib/modules/4.13.0-38-generic

None of the 5 GHz networks show up in the "up/down" WiFi settings.

Question: How to add RTL8811AU 802.11ac adapter for 5 GHz High-Speed WiFi

networking drivers usb 16.04 realtek-wireless

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Turns out the last command is not necessary and gives an error message with no meaning.

    In Ubuntu 16.04 the driver gets installed into two places:

    /sys/bus/usb//drivers/rtl8812au
/sys/module/rtl8812au

    And it automatically loads after a reboot.

    When the ifconfig command is issued, it can clearly be seen operating as wlx00e0xxxxxxxx - reflecting the HWaddr in the name of the new interface.

    Then by clicking on the "up/down" icon at the upper right of the screen the 5 GHz networks are clearly visible in the first part of the WiFi Networks() section.

    To recap, the commands necessary are simply these:

    sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic build-essential git
git clone https://github.com/abperiasamy/rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux.git
(Enter username and password for Github)
cd rtl8812AU_8821AU_linux
make
sudo make install
(REBOOT)

    Then voila, it works.

    Note that when plugged into a USB 2.0 port, the speed will be limited to 433 Mbps.

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