[rtl8812au] Driver, is Firmware needed too?

Installing and Using OpenWrt
1

Folks,

Been a long term user of Linux, mainly Debian type distros but I am new to Open-WRT.

Installed it on a Raspberry-pi 3B as a project, all working fine, ethernet connected to network and onboard wifi acts as an Access Point.

To inprove range I bought a TP-Link AC600 Archer T2U plus, it seems to use the rtl8812au driver and I have installed that using the luci interface. Still not recognised.

Do I have to install any firmware? There doesn't seem to be anything specific for this driver.

Geoff

2

what have you installed, exactly ?

3

Seeing that my device uses rtl8812 I installed the following;

kmod-rtl8812au-ct

4.14.221+2018-11-16-661268fd-1
534.2 KB
Driver for Realtek 8812 AU devices comfast 912-ac, etc

Geoff

4

is it detected in dmesg, and what does lsusb say ?

5

dmesg gives the following;

746.092227] usb 1-1.4: new high-speed USB device number 4 using dwc_otg
[ 746.223374] usb 1-1.4: New USB device found, idVendor=2357, idProduct=0120
[ 746.232283] usb 1-1.4: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 746.241574] usb 1-1.4: Product: 802.11ac WLAN Adapter
[ 746.248621] usb 1-1.4: Manufacturer: Realtek
[ 746.254790] usb 1-1.4: SerialNumber: 00e04c000001

lsusb gives this output;

Bus 001 Device 004: ID 2357:0120 TP-Link
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. SMSC9512/9514 Fast Ethernet Adapter
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9514 Standard Microsystems Corp. SMC9514 Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

There is a big output from lsusb -v -s 001:004 and I am not sure what is relevant to wont post loads of info unless you are interested in anything specific.

Geoff

6

with usb wireless nic's and openwrt(and linux in general I suppose despite what manufacturers often claim)...

it's best to assume they don't work unless told otherwise...

starting from a point of expecting it work without stating what makes this expectation valid is naive at best...

  • what makes you think it will work out of the box
  • what research have you done about it and openwrt ( what guide or instructions did you settle on )?
  • have you used it in a full distro... / what kernels does the manufacturer claim to support?
  • what is the actual specs / revision of your individual adapter...?

in short... I suggest you do a little reading... possibly starting here...

and working your way down from there...

7

Thank you for being so condescending as to suggest I do a bit of reading, if you read my post you would realise I did not suggest it should work out of the box, my research suggested realtek was well supported by Linux.

Forums are not places to be admonished for asking questions, if everyone actually did very deep searches for every query then forums may eventually die, as Fidonet virtually has.

Geoff

2 Likes
8

slightly off topic.....if you can't get it to work I can suggest a Ralink RT5572 based stick, for example that one. It works flawless in OpenWrt, but keep in mind it's only 802.11n, expect ~40Mb/s on 2,4G,20MHz and ~70Mb/s on 2,4G/5G 40MHz (from my testings)
Don't forget AFAIK Rpi3 NIC shares bandwidth with usb ports so data rate is limited anyway.

If it's all about coverage, you could decide welding an antenna connector (if not there anyway) to the onboard wifi and use an external antenna!? I guess there are tons of tutorials on web.

Just my 2 cents...

9

someone on IRC wanted to try rtl8812au from morrownr
I also did some changes to the repo used in Arch Linux AUR for rtl8812au-dkms-git
both are 5.x versions compared to rtl8812au-ct currently in OpenWrt which is based on 4.3.14

Realtek drivers are really messy

so I created two Pull Requests / Makefiles

and

with both drivers scanning works but joining a WLAN does currently not work

feel free to test or comment here / in the pull request

for testing I used a TP-Link Archer T4U attached to a virtual machine (qemu) running OpenWrt
edit: lsusb reports

2357:0101 TP-Link RTL8812AU Archer T4U 802.11ac
1 Like
10

Thank you for suggestion, 802.11n would be fine. I've got an extra AP working via a powerline connected in my home. The R-Pi and OpenWRT was an initial experimental project to get a signal in my garden and to see if I liked the option of upgrading my router to a device that could take an OpenWRT firmware.

Geoff

11

Thank you, I do have an Arch distro running off an external disk so may give that a try.

Geoff

12

those realtek drivers do not work nice with luci

but client mode with N network works if you configure it via ssh / command line

other stuff not yet tested

13

Ah well, it is working fine with the onboard RaspberryPi WiFi which I am guessing is bridged with eth0

However, experimenting is how we learn so all good fun trying to get things to work.

Geoff