No WiFi option in Network Panel

[Roshi]

Hello,

New CentOS (and Linux) user here. Interested in Linux for some time, got myself an udemy course, and it recommended CentOS, so I installed CentOS Stream 9.

I have a USB WiFi adapted and it's not working, see the images below. Now I am connected with a cable to my home router.

Found a solution on the net here:
https://tutorialforlinux.com/2020/06/05 ... tallation/
It pointed me to a driver on github, I followed the exact steps there, first "sudo dnf update && sudo dnf upgrade" then "sudo dnf groupinstall "C Development Tools and Libraries", then I was supposed to do "make" inside the folder where I unzipped the driver, it did some stuff then it gave me an error.

But I think the driver is installed, because lsusb shows the device RTL8188EUS - even before I attempted the above steps.

Screenshot from 2022-07-06 19-48-40.png (211.49 KiB) Viewed 1922 times

Screenshot from 2022-07-06 19-33-09.png (153.93 KiB) Viewed 1922 times

Screenshot from 2022-07-06 12-31-45.png (132.82 KiB) Viewed 1922 times

Anyone have any idea what's going on? Thank you in advance

[TrevorH]

Running lsusb just tells you what hardware is plugged in. It shows the same info if there is a driver or if there is not.

Unfortunately ELRepo do not support Stream and its kernels or they would be the best bet for a third party driver. You could use Alma/Rocky or even RHEL 9 and they might build a kmod for this driver but they will not support Stream because it has no stable KABI so the package would need rebuilding all the time... which is actually a problem you are going to run into if you do manage to convince that driver to build. It will need rebuilding for each and every kernel update.

Or buy a USB adapter that works out of the box.

[Roshi]

Thank you for the reply.
I installed the free RHEL 9 instead of Centos 9 - still not working. My adapter is TP Link WN722N, 3.0.
Then I found an older WN722N, version 1.0 I had around, and it works on RHEL without doing anything. I think I will keep RHEL for now.

I don't really understand what's going on, was about to install Fedora, maybe there the WN722N 3.0 works?

[TrevorH]

The problem is that the RHEL kernel does not contain the module required to make the WN722N. Nor does the Stream kernel. However, the difference is that RHEL kernels (and those for Alma/Rocky/OEL) all use a stable KABI and that means that ELRepo can produce third party driver packages for those distros. Stream does not use a stable KABI so ELRepo cannot do that for Stream.

So if you run RHEL/Rocky/Alma/OEL then you could ask ELRepo if they can package the driver for you. If you run Stream then you cannot. So your next step to getting this working on RHEL is to ask ELRepo nicely via a ticket on their bugtracker, if they could attempt to create a kmod package for 8188eus.

It wouldn't help to run Fedora either, that doesn't support that card either.

[Roshi]

Ty, don't know what a stable KABI really is

Update on my quest:

TL-WN722N V3 works on Fedora, and it does not work on Centos Stream 9 and RHEL 9.

TL-WN722N V1 does not work on Fedora, but works on Centos Stream 9 and RHEL 9.

Also had the problem of my wifi network not being displayed in the list, this happened on all Linuxes I tested, even Ubuntu. Found this solution: set the wifi channel of the router somewhere between 0 and 9. If it's a bigger number the wifi is invisible, I could not connect even with "connect to hidden network".