Lenovo Yoga 13 Realtek wireless driver

Question

I've recently purchased a Lenovo Yoga 13 and put Ubuntu 13.04 on it last night. I was unable to get wireless to come on and thought that I would mess around with it today. Today I have followed the detailed 'how-to' at: http://majordamo.wordpress.com/2013/05/15/getting-the-realtek-rtl8723ae-bt-wi-fi-card-to-work-on-a-lenovo-yoga-13-on-linux-mint-13-ubuntu-12-10/ The problem is I can not download and install the required headers as I do not have ANY internet connection on this device. Is there any way for me to get them on a flash drive and bring them to the Lenovo?

Any and all help is appreciated. Thanks

Solution 1

Update: as of 14.10 utopic, there is a semi-working driver included by default, but it frequently disconnects and has difficulty reconnecting. The best solution is to continue to build the lwfinger driver as described below and then blacklist the driver included in Ubuntu.

That how-to link is outdated; the latest version of the rtl8723au wireless driver can be found at https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8723au.

In preparation we'll need some build tools and kernel headers:

sudo apt-get install git build-essential linux-headers-generic linux-headers-$(uname -r)

Here are the steps to install:

git clone https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8723au.git
cd rtl8723au/
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe 8723au

When you update the kernel, you'll need to run these steps again to get wireless working (except for the git clone). To fetch the latest version of the code, use git pull. Alternatively you can set up DKMS to do that for you as described in user20826's answer.

The bluetooth driver for that chip can then be found at https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8723au_bt. Perform the preparation as above and install like this:

git clone https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8723au_bt.git
cd rtl8723au_bt/
make
sudo make install

Solution 2

The author merged in DKMS support a few months ago, but didn't integrate it into the make install process. Following these commands will add it to DKMS so you don't have to manually recompile after every kernel update.

From https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8723au/blob/master/README.dkms:

To get DKMS to work:

• Install dkms

  sudo apt-get install dkms
  

• Clone this source to the directory /usr/src/8723au-0.1/

  sudo git clone https://github.com/lwfinger/rtl8723au.git /usr/src/8723au-0.1
  

  or if you already had it cloned to [PATH]

  sudo cp -R [PATH] /usr/src/8723au-0.1
  

• Run (as root):

  dkms add -m 8723au -v 0.1
  

• Test a build:

  dkms build -m 8723au -v 0.1
  

From now on this driver should be available for any new kernels.

Solution 3

Post #6 here, although it is for a different driver, describes the process to download and install linux-headers and build-essential on a flash drive, transfer them to the Yoga and install them. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2050126 It is cumbersome and tedious, but it can be done.

Comments

[Hosh Sadiq]

It has to be said that you need to make sure that you modprobe exactly as it says here. I kept doing sudo modprobe rtl8723ae, which turns out wasn't the right one.

[Kirill Fuchs]

My wifi runs a little slow but it works and so far the best answer I've found. Thanks. +1

[Dr. Mike]

I followed this advice and it worked great. After updating the kernel I was going to repeat the procedure but this time I cannot seem to build it. When I issue the make command I get "CONFIG_X86_X32 enabled but no binutils support". Any ideas why?

[GameScripting]

ATTENTION: The bluetooth driver caused a kernel panic for me during (recovery) boot (kernel 3.13.0-24generic on ubuntu gnome 14.04). To fix it merge github.com/lwfinger/rtl8723au_bt/pull/9 in.

[vak]

OK. got wifi working with this: $ cat /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist-ideapad_laptop.conf blacklist ideapad_laptop @david you may want add this to your update info.

[david]

I am having the same problem with the driver shipped with 14.10. My current hacky solution is to keep a terminal window up continuously pinging my router - this keeps the connection from dropping.

[vak]

well, here is my experience: lwfinger brought the driver to a quite reliable state -- one understands this after having P.I.T.A. with the frustratingly unstable built-in Ubuntu 14.10 driver.

[David Foerster]

This would make a great edit to David's answer.

[Steve M]

@vak blacklisting ideapad_laptop doesn't seem to actually stop the wifi driver from loading? Ubuntu 14.04.2

[david]

@SteveM I believe the module to blacklist is r8723au, rather than ideapad-laptop, but my laptop broke so I cannot confirm.

[Cormac Brady]

does not seem to work in the new 16.04 release