[Solved] Wireless issue on HP DeviceName: Realtek RTL8188EE 802.11bgn Wi-Fi Adapter; "*-network UNCLAIMED"

[CraigLi]

I bought a HP PC and put Linux Mint on it immediately since I didn't want to deal with all the tracking that Windows 10 does. I'm new to Linux but played around a bit with Linux Mint booting off a USB from my desk to make sure I felt comfortable enough with Linux and I did. I don't need much -- internet access, libreoffice, and wireless connectivity for when I'm on the road. Everything is working great on my new PC except that I can't get my wireless working. I've read a lot of forum posts and tried a lot of things but hopefully I haven't tried everything yet. I went with Linux Mint because I heard it's better for new Windows users.

I don't know where the log files are or how to read them.

Here's some of the commands I've run and their output.

I'm having trouble posting -- maybe because this is too long so I'm going to submit in batches

[CraigLi]

Here's the first part of what I've done so far

inxi -Fxz
System: Host: craig-2018-laptop Kernel: 4.8.0-53-generic x86_64 (64 bit gcc: 5.4.0)
Desktop: Cinnamon 3.4.6 (Gtk 3.18.9-1ubuntu3.3) Distro: Linux Mint 18.2 Sonya
Machine: System: HP (portable) product: HP Pavilion Laptop 15-cs0xxx v: Type1ProductConfigId
Mobo: HP model: 84BE v: 02.12 Bios: Insyde v: F.01 date: 03/08/2018

~~~~~~

Network: Card-1: Realtek Device c821 port: 4000 bus-ID: 02:00.0
IF: N/A state: N/A speed: N/A duplex: N/A mac: N/A
Card-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
driver: r8169 v: 2.3LK-NAPI port: 3000 bus-ID: 03:00.0
IF: eno1 state: up speed: 100 Mbps duplex: full mac: <filter>

craig@my-laptop ~ $ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

eno1 no wireless extensions.


craig@my-laptop ~ $ sudo lshw -C network
*-network UNCLAIMED
description: Network controller
product: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
version: 00
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress cap_list
configuration: latency=0
resources: ioport:4000(size=256) memory:b1100000-b110ffff
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller
vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
~~~~~~~~~~~~ <blah> <blah> <blah>

craig@my-laptop ~ $ netstat -i
Kernel Interface table
Iface MTU Met RX-OK RX-ERR RX-DRP RX-OVR TX-OK TX-ERR TX-DRP TX-OVR Flg
eno1 1500 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 BMU
lo 65536 0 13352 0 0 0 13352 0 0 0 LRU

[JeremyB]

Try

Code: Select all

sudo apt install git build-essential
git clone https://github.com/tomaspinho/rtl8821ce.git
cd rtl8821ce
make
sudo make install

Reboot snd check BIOS settings to make sure that Secure Boot is disabled

[CraigLi]

Thank you for your reply Jeremy.

I tried the commands and I got this error on the make
~/rtl8821ce $ make
make ARCH=x86_64 CROSS_COMPILE= -C /lib/modules/4.8.0-53-generic/build M=/home/craig/rtl8821ce modules
make[1]: Entering directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-4.8.0-53-generic'
CC [M] /home/craig/rtl8821ce/core/rtw_cmd.o
In file included from /home/craig/rtl8821ce/include/drv_types.h:32:0,
from /home/craig/rtl8821ce/core/rtw_cmd.c:22:
/home/craig/rtl8821ce/include/osdep_service.h:47:33: fatal error: linux/sched/signal.h: No such file or directory
compilation terminated.
scripts/Makefile.build:289: recipe for target '/home/craig/rtl8821ce/core/rtw_cmd.o' failed
make[2]: *** [/home/craig/rtl8821ce/core/rtw_cmd.o] Error 1
Makefile:1491: recipe for target '_module_/home/craig/rtl8821ce' failed
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/craig/rtl8821ce] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-4.8.0-53-generic'
Makefile:1902: recipe for target 'modules' failed
make: *** [modules] Error 2

I searched for the error and found this link which I found confusing and complicated
https://www.linuxquestions.org/question ... 175638486/

I found the FreedomBen drivers and I seem to have installed them okay though I wonder why it says it can't find a Realtek card

I tried to make sure that the proper driver is installed so I installed the FreedomBen drivers. One thing that surprised me is that it said I don't have Realtek card when I know I do.
sudo git clone https://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce ... driver.git && cd rtl8188ce-linux-driver && ./install.sh

craig@my-laptop ~ $ sudo git clone https://github.com/FreedomBen/rtl8188ce ... driver.git && cd rtl8188ce-linux-driver && ./install.sh
Cloning into 'rtl8188ce-linux-driver'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 102, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (102/102), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (94/94), done.
remote: Total 7937 (delta 48), reused 47 (delta , pack-reused 7835
Receiving objects: 100% (7937/7937), 19.16 MiB | 403.00 KiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (6059/6059), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
[*] I wasn't able to find a Realtek card on your machine. Do you want to proceed anyway? (Y/N): Y[/b]

[CraigLi]

I believe the next two commands show that the drivers were installed.

sudo ls -altr /lib/modules/4.8.0-53-generic/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/rtlwifi

total 184
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 153696 Nov 4 11:25 rtlwifi.ko
drwxr-xr-x 17 root root 4096 Nov 4 11:25 ..
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 4 11:25 rtl8192se
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 4 11:25 rtl8192c
drwxr-xr-x 8 root root 4096 Nov 4 11:25 .
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 4 11:25 rtl8192de
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 4 11:25 rtl8192cu
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 4 11:25 rtl8192ce
drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 4096 Nov 4 11:25 rtl8188ee
craig@my-laptop ~ $

craig@my-laptop ~ $ lsmod | grep rtl
rtl8188ee 86016 0
rtlwifi 106496 1 rtl8188ee
mac80211 761856 2 rtl8188ee,rtlwifi
cfg80211 581632 2 mac80211,rtlwifi
btrtl 16384 1 btusb
bluetooth 557056 14 btrtl,hci_uart,btintel,btqca,bnep,btbcm,btusb
craig@my-laptop ~ $


I also edited /etc/networking/interfaces to add
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp

Then I restarted networking
sudo /etc/init.d/networking stop
sudo /etc/init.d/networking start


Same error as original that network is UNCLAIMED and wlan0 not listed

[JeremyB]

If you had the rtl8188ee wifi, the kernel would have supported it, but your info showed "Realtek Device c821" and that should be a rtl8821ce and I think some of the first source code for it wouldn't compile on kernels older than 4.14, so you may have to update the kernel to the 4.15 kernels

[CraigLi]

Thank you again Jeremy. I will figure out how to update my kernel to the4.15 kernels. I'll keep you posted.

[CraigLi]

Thank you Jeremy that was it. I needed to update my kernel to 4.15.

For others, here's what I did.

Go to
http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/v4.15/

Download the following 3 .deb files for x86 64 bit (all three files needed)
linux-headers-4.15.0-041500_4.15.0-041500.201802011154_all.deb
linux-headers-4.15.0-041500-generic_4.15.0-041500.201802011154_i386.deb
linux-image-4.15.0-041500-generic_4.15.0-041500.201802011154_i386.deb

Double click on each .deb file (in the listed order) to bring up package manager to install

Once all three packages are installed
Reboot

Verify installed kernel:
uname -r

I'm not sure how Jeremy knew I have a rtl8821ce instead of rtl8188ee but he is correct

Install proper driver (from Jeremy's post)

sudo apt install git build-essential
git clone https://github.com/tomaspinho/rtl8821ce.git
cd rtl8821ce
make
sudo make install

Reboot again and wifi magically working

Again Thank you. very happy to have wifi

[CraigLi]

Here's some additional steps I found out are required when I had to reload my PC.

After installing kernel 4.15 and the rtl8821ce drivers (previous post), it is also necessary to do the following

Edit /etc/networking/interfaces to add (I added them at the end of the file -- I only had two lines originally)
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp

Reboot

And that should be it -- at least that's all I needed to do.