Ubuntu WiFi problem resolved

If you have recently updated from any other operating system to Ubuntu or you have dual OS in your laptop then you might face the wifi problem, your laptop is having the wifi adapter but OS will show one message like you do not have the wifi adapter :

In this case you need to figure out that which wifi hardware is being used in you laptop,  "lspci" and "lshw" are two commands to find out the name of it,  follow the below snapshot

Now you know very well that your laptop have the wireless hardware but missing thing is the relative software of it, this kind of special software is known as the hardware drivers, these drivers are used to function the hardwares, you can google if you want to know the software drivers in details, basically software drivers are special software program which runs inside the operating system's kernel, each computer peripheral devices are having the relative drivers to perform the read/write operations, in my laptop the wireless hardware is provided by "Mediatek Corp..", i found the software in github i.e https://github.com/neurobin/MT7630E.git , you need to search the software in internet and then need to build it, i used the below steps to clone, build and install the wireless driver:

sudo apt-get install git build-essential

git clone https://github.com/neurobin/MT7630E.git

cd MT7630E/

chmod +x install test uninstall

sudo ./install

sudo reboot

Here the "install" script itself compiles and install the program in your computer, below are the content of the install script

#!/bin/bash

set -e

BASEDIR="$(dirname "$BASH_SOURCE")"

cd "$BASEDIR"

if (( $EUID != 0 )); then

    printf "\n-----Sorry! Run with root privilege (for example with 'sudo ./install')\n\n"

    exit 1

fi

KERNEL=${1-$(uname -r)}

make KERNEL=$KERNEL

make install KERNEL=$KERNEL

modprobe mt7630e -S $KERNEL

modprobe mt76xx -S $KERNEL

echo "

The driver has been successfully installed.

If you don't have wifi yet, try to reboot.

If bluetooth doesn't work, read the bluetooth

section in README.md file and follow through.

"

You can see above that the source code is compiled on the basis of current kernel architecture to generate the appropriate binary,  once kernel module is geing generated it is being inserted into the linux kernel.

For learning perspective you can also execute the makefile instead of executing the install script, makefile will have below kind of content inside that:

.PHONY: all clean install uninstall

KERNEL ?= `uname -r`

KDIR ?= /lib/modules/$(KERNEL)/build

DST_DIR ?= /lib/modules/$(KERNEL)/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/

PKG_VER ?= `sed -n 's/^[[:blank:]]*PACKAGE_VERSION=\([^[:blank:]]*\).*/\1/p' dkms.conf`

all:

        $(MAKE) -C $(KDIR) M=$(CURDIR)/rt2x00 modules

        $(MAKE) -C $(KDIR) M=$(CURDIR)/btloader modules

clean:

        $(MAKE) -C $(KDIR) M=$(CURDIR)/rt2x00 clean

        $(MAKE) -C $(KDIR) M=$(CURDIR)/btloader clean

install:

        cp -v firmware/*/* /lib/firmware/

        cp rt2x00/mt7630e.ko $(DST_DIR)

        cp btloader/mt76xx.ko $(DST_DIR)

        depmod $(KERNEL)

uninstall:

        rm -vf /lib/firmware/mt76x0.bin /lib/firmware/MT7650E234.bin

        rm -vf $(DST_DIR)/mt7630e.ko

        rm -vf $(DST_DIR)/mt76xx.ko

        depmod $(KERNEL)

dkms:

        cp -v firmware/*/* /lib/firmware/

        cp -R . /usr/src/mt7630e-$(PKG_VER)

        dkms add -m mt7630e -v $(PKG_VER)

        dkms build -m mt7630e -v $(PKG_VER) -k $(KERNEL)

        dkms install -m mt7630e -v $(PKG_VER) -k $(KERNEL)

"make" simply compile your source code and build the kernel module ( .ko file) for you, after that you can simply insert the module in ubuntu's kernel by mannual "insmod" commad, my makefile compilation terminal logs are below:

jeet@jeet-X200LA:~/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E$ sudo make

make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=/home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00 modules

make[1]: Entering directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-4.15.0-91-generic'

  CC [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/rt2x00dev.o

  CC [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/rt2x00mac.o

  CC [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/rt2x00config.o

  CC [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/rt2x00queue.o

  CC [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/rt2x00link.o

  CC [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/mt_linux.o

  CC [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/rt2x00crypto.o

  CC [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/rt2x00firmware.o

  CC [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/rt2x00leds.o

  CC [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/rt2x00mmio.o

  CC [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/rt2800pci.o

  CC [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/rt2800lib.o

  CC [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/rt2x00pci.o

  LD [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/mt7630e.o

  Building modules, stage 2.

  MODPOST 1 modules

  CC      /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/mt7630e.mod.o

  LD [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/rt2x00/mt7630e.ko

make[1]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-4.15.0-91-generic'

make -C /lib/modules/`uname -r`/build M=/home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/btloader modules

make[1]: Entering directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-4.15.0-91-generic'

  CC [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/btloader/mt76xx.o

  Building modules, stage 2.

  MODPOST 1 modules

  CC      /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/btloader/mt76xx.mod.o

  LD [M]  /home/jeet/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E/btloader/mt76xx.ko

make[1]: Leaving directory '/usr/src/linux-headers-4.15.0-91-generic'

Now kernel module is generated and ready to be inserted into the kernel, i ran the below command to insert:

jeet@jeet-X200LA:~/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E$ sudo insmod rt2x00/mt7630e.ko 

insmod: ERROR: could not insert module rt2x00/mt7630e.ko: File exists

jeet@jeet-X200LA:~/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E$ 

I already inserted therefore it is showing "File exists", below is the description:

jeet@jeet-X200LA:~/Downloads/wifi-Driver-Ubuntu/MT7630E$ lsmod | grep mt76

mt76xx                 20480  0

mt7630e               180224  0

mac80211              786432  1 mt7630e

cfg80211              622592  2 mt7630e,mac80211

eeprom_93cx6           16384  1 mt7630e

Now you must be able to find the wifi devices, go to setting and turn on the wifi, you must be able to see the wireless devices

The conclusion of the above story is that you need to find out the wireless hardware name then only you will able to find the driver, for almost all the mediatek devices to to https://www.mediatek.com/products/broadbandWifi/mt7630 link and read the appropriate information to resolve you issue.

If you need more help related to your wireless hardware then please comment i will try to resolve your all issues.

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