Wireless not working on Toshiba Satellite C55-A5281

Question

The wireless doesn't work on my Toshiba Satellite C55-A5281. The device originally came with Windows 8, but I removed it snd installed Ubuntu. Wireless does not work "out of the box" and there are no proprietary drivers to enable in the manager. Wired connection however does work, along with the keyboards and it's functions-brightness, sound, etc. I posted about this in the forum last-week, but no other people were able to help. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2168927

Solution

If this is your device, it is covered by the very new driver rtl8188ee:

Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device [10ec:8179] 

Verify your device with the terminal command:

lspci -nn

If so, you can compile this driver in 13.04. Please get a temporary wired ethernet connection and do:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic build-essential

I suggest you download this to your desktop: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/backports/stable/v3.11-rc3/backports-3.11-rc3-1.tar.bz2 Right-click it and select 'Extract Here.' Now open a terminal and do:

cd ~/Desktop/backports-3.11-rc3-1/
make defconfig-rtlwifi
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe rtl8188ee

Your wireless should now be working. You will have compiled the driver for your currently running kernel only. When Update Manager installs a later linux-image, after reboot, re-compile:

cd ~/Desktop/backports-3.11-rc3-1/
make clean
make defconfig-rtlwifi
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe rtl8188ee

If the message logs say you need firmware:

dmesg | grep rtl

Download and install it with:

wget http://mirror.pnl.gov/ubuntu//pool/main/l/linux-firmware/linux-firmware_1.106_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i linux*.deb 
sudo modprobe -r rtl8188ee && sudo modprobe rtl8188ee

Comments

[gertvdijk]

So, basically, what you're saying is "apply system updates using another internet connection and reboot"? You really don't have to explain your problem for that. Also, using another offical Ubuntu derivative will not change anything in terms of hardware support - all use the same kernel and networking libraries.

[Red Starfox]

Well...I tested out Ubuntu 13.04 Linuxwelt and Kubuntu 13.04 So far Kubuntu only worked on Laptops and similar, only one desktop system...Ubuntu works great when enough graphical power is there, but otherwise a lot of work is needed to optimize it. Ubuntu only worked with P4 or more...as described in it's system requirements...all systems have them and they are different from distro to distro, that's way there are so many different distros, different looks and eye-candies, as all have different hardware goals.

[David]

For some reason after the first attempt it worked until I rebooted. I tried again and after a few reboots this still seems to have worked.

[Trae]

I get an error when running make defconfig-rtlwifi: Generating local configuration database from kernel ...Kernel version parse failed! Makefile:40: recipe for target 'defcongif-trlwifi' failed make: *** [defcongif-trlwifi] Error 1

[chili555]

@Trae This guide is quite old in Linux years. I suggest you start a new question and tell us what problem you are having with your wireless. I doubt that backports-3.11 is an answer in late-2016.

[Trae]

@chili555 My issue is pretty much identical to the one you answered here, but here's an updated question: askubuntu.com/questions/843280