Fedora Wifi adapter

Ask Fedora
1

Hello,
I am very new to fedora and linux in general (All of my experience is through working with WSL)
and have recently tried installing Fedora on a old machine of mine but currently I can’t connect to wifi and get a No wifi adapter found message.

How can I approach finding a solution to this problem?

I have a TP-Link Archer T3U Plus AC1300 USB adapter and read instruction somewhere on this forum that this driver may help but it didn’t change anything

System:
  Kernel: 6.3.8-200.fc38.x86_64 arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc
    v: 2.39-9.fc38 Desktop: GNOME v: 44.2 Distro: Fedora release 38 (Thirty
    Eight)
Machine:
  Type: Desktop System: Hewlett-Packard product: 700-327c v: 1.00
    serial: <superuser required>
  Mobo: Hewlett-Packard model: 2AF7 v: 1.04 serial: <superuser required>
    UEFI: AMI v: 80.15 date: 04/15/2014
Battery:
  Device-1: apple_mfi_fastcharge model: N/A charge: N/A status: N/A
CPU:
  Info: quad core model: Intel Core i7-4770 bits: 64 type: MT MCP
    arch: Haswell rev: 3 cache: L1: 256 KiB L2: 1024 KiB L3: 8 MiB
  Speed (MHz): avg: 2547 high: 3900 min/max: 800/3900 cores: 1: 800 2: 3395
    3: 3900 4: 3393 5: 3392 6: 3900 7: 800 8: 800 bogomips: 54280
  Flags: avx avx2 ht lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 ssse3
Graphics:
  Device-1: Intel Xeon E3-1200 v3/4th Gen Core Processor Integrated Graphics
    vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: i915 v: kernel arch: Gen-7.5 bus-ID: 00:02.0
  Display: wayland server: X.Org v: 22.1.9 with: Xwayland v: 22.1.9
    compositor: gnome-shell driver: dri: crocus gpu: i915
    resolution: 1920x1080~60Hz
  API: OpenGL v: 4.6 Mesa 23.1.2 renderer: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 4600 (HSW
    GT2) direct-render: Yes
Audio:
  Device-1: Intel 8 Series/C220 Series High Definition Audio
    vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus-ID: 00:1b.0
  API: ALSA v: k6.3.8-200.fc38.x86_64 status: kernel-api
  Server-1: PipeWire v: 0.3.71 status: active
Network:
  Device-1: Ralink RT3290 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe vendor: Hewlett-Packard
    driver: rt2800pci v: 2.3.0 bus-ID: 02:00.0
  IF: wlp2s0f0 state: down mac: <filter>
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet
    vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: r8169 v: kernel port: e000 bus-ID: 03:00.0
  IF: enp3s0 state: down mac: <filter>
  Device-3: TP-Link 802.11ac NIC driver: rtw_8822bu type: USB bus-ID: 1-10:8
  IF: wlp0s20u10 state: down mac: <filter>
  IF-ID-1: enp0s20u14c4i2 state: up speed: N/A duplex: N/A mac: <filter>
Bluetooth:
  Device-1: Ralink RT3290 Bluetooth vendor: Hewlett-Packard driver: N/A
    bus-ID: 02:00.1
  Report: This feature requires one of these tools: hciconfig/bt-adapter
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 931.51 GiB used: 6.42 GiB (0.7%)
  ID-1: /dev/sda vendor: Seagate model: ST1000DM003-1CH162 size: 931.51 GiB
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 929.93 GiB used: 6.17 GiB (0.7%) fs: btrfs dev: /dev/sda3
  ID-2: /boot size: 973.4 MiB used: 239.3 MiB (24.6%) fs: ext4
    dev: /dev/sda2
  ID-3: /boot/efi size: 598.8 MiB used: 17.4 MiB (2.9%) fs: vfat
    dev: /dev/sda1
  ID-4: /home size: 929.93 GiB used: 6.17 GiB (0.7%) fs: btrfs
    dev: /dev/sda3
Swap:
  ID-1: swap-1 type: zram size: 8 GiB used: 0 KiB (0.0%) dev: /dev/zram0
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 50.0 C mobo: N/A
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A
Info:
  Processes: 485 Uptime: 36m Memory: available: 15.51 GiB
  used: 3.17 GiB (20.4%) Init: systemd target: graphical (5) Compilers:
  gcc: 13.1.1 Packages: N/A note: see --rpm Shell: Bash v: 5.2.15 inxi: 3.3.27
2

That looks like a missing driver as you noted.

Please provide the output of lsusb with the wifi dongle attached so we may see the actual chipset included in that adapter. Once that is known then it is likely the driver may be identified for installation.

4

image
The usb dongle was just a second option because the built in wifi adapter didn’t work

5

Now I am confused. Is that from the internal adapter or the usb?
Do you want the internal adapter to work?

In any case, it appears that for the TP-Link adapter this site has instructions for the driver.

If you want the built in adapter to work then we need to see the info for it so the driver may be identified if possible.
Possibly with lspci -nn | grep -iE "network|ethernet"

6

WSL can provide a good introduction to the linux command line, but doesn’t force you to dig into hardware details.

The Linux Hardware Database (LHWDB) is based on user-contributed hardware scans. You can search for your PC model and see what devices work for others (and which drivers they use). You can also search for your devices (first find the vendor and device id’s using lspci and lsusb, or run hw-probe. There is already oone probe for a similar system, but you should do your own to be sure of the details. You may need to install hw-probe:

% dnf info hw-probe
Fedora 38 - x86_64 - Updates                                                             41 kB/s |  22 kB     00:00
Fedora 38 - x86_64 - Updates                                                            1.4 MB/s | 2.0 MB     00:01
Fedora Modular 38 - x86_64 - Updates                                                     94 kB/s |  23 kB     00:00
Installed Packages
Name         : hw-probe
Version      : 1.6.5
Release      : 1.fc38
Architecture : noarch
Size         : 568 k
Source       : hw-probe-1.6.5-1.fc38.src.rpm
Repository   : @System
From repo    : updates
Summary      : Check operability of computer hardware and find drivers
URL          : https://github.com/linuxhw/hw-probe
License      : LGPLv2+
Description  : A tool to probe for hardware, check operability and find drivers
             : with the help of Linux hardware database:
             :
             :     sudo -E hw-probe -all -upload

Linux support for USB WiFi Chipsets says:

Realtek RTW88 (in-kernel driver) (WiFi 5)

[3] In-kernel support for the following chipsets is now in kernel 6.2 and later:

rtl8822bu
rtl8812bu
rtl8821cu
rtl8811cu

There are performance issues with this in-kernel driver currently

If your internal internal WiFi is the same as the one scan in the database:

PCI 1814:3290:103c:18ec (http://linux-hardware.org/?id=pci:1814-3290-103c-18ec)
/ 02-80 Ralink corp. RT3290 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe network rt2800pci

Your system should be using the rt2800pci driver, so you may not need the USB WiFi with
“performance issues”. Make sure your system is fully updated (so you don’t encounter already fixed bugs and also so others can have the same software versions). Then you can investigate the reason the internal WiFi is not used with journalctl. Search for relevant keywords like wifi, rt2800, ralink.

7

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8

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Is this regular?

9

I just found out its Hard blocked, what should I try doing to fix this?
image

10

Hard block usually means the block is set outside the control of linux (hardware switch or BIOS). What happens if you remove the USB wifi device (you generally don’t want 2 wifi devices running at the same time)? Try to find a user manual for your system.

11

Once unplugging the dongle I Just saw
0 wlan phy0 unblocked blocked

12

That tells us your internal adapter is blocked.

If dual booting it may be caused by windows having the device disabled or powered off with power saving, using windows fastboot, or some other interactions with windows settings.

It also may be a setting within bios or a hardware switch as already noted. It appears the driver is loading, but the device is disabled.

13

I’m not dual booting but I’ll look at the bios settings.

14

If the BIOS doesn’t have a setting, check vendor forums – your problem probably affects other users with the same hardware, and would not be specific to Fedora. Some systems have a jumper on the system board (presumably coupled with a lockable case) so IT can force cubicle farm users to use the wired network.