Wifi cards

[Don]

Well, I after extensive testing, I think my wireless card has gone belly-up.
inxi -nx gives me

Device-1: Intel Ethernet I219-V vendor: Gigabyte driver: e1000e v: kernel
port: N/A bus-ID: 00:1f.6
IF: eno1 state: up speed: 1000 Mbps duplex: full mac: e0:d5:5e:89:73:0a
IF-ID-1: vmnet1 state: unknown speed: N/A duplex: N/A
mac: 00:50:56:c0:00:01
IF-ID-2: vmnet8 state: unknown speed: N/A duplex: N/A
mac: 00:50:56:c0:00:08

I have downloaded and attempted to install the latest driver from SourceForge, but I get the following when I run it:

dpkg: error processing package e1000e-dkms (--install):
installed e1000e-dkms package post-installation script subprocess returned error exit status 10


These things happen. Suggestions for replacement cards are more than welcome. Thanks.

[claydoh]

The e1000e driver isn't for wifi cards, but your wired Ethernet device. You likely won't get a more up to date driver, or need one there, usually. Not for this extremely common item.
Plus we have no idea what you mean by "latest driver from sourceforge" as usually this is part of the kernel's stuff, iirc.
Which wouldn't be on Sourceforge. Whatever package you grabbed probably isn't compatible with 22.04, or something. The actual errors would probably be hiding somewhere in the scrollback above the final one you posted.


What Wifi adapter do you think you might have?
Double check that the wifi card isn't loose somehow, just to be sure.
Sort of surprised it doesn't show up, even if non-functional, but if it is dead, it may be *really* dead.

As to replacements, that is easy. Most ANY intel wifi chip is a great choice, but it does need to be the correct type for your system. This depends on its age. New to less-old system use an m.2 slot for it.
This one is a good choice. There will be many similar ones available, you do want to look at the images and find 'intel' on the cards on Amazon in particular, for some reason.
A non-Intel budget choice I can grudgingly vouch for is this one, but my shaky hands managed to somehow break off one of the antenna connections when moving it to a different system. Beware of poor solder and build quality.

If you have an older system that uses the similar-looking mini-PCI-E card, then something like this one

If you have an actual addon PCI card, then I can vouch for this one (actually found used for cheaper on Ebay at the time) and this one.
Again, there will be similar offerings. these cards actually contain similar m.2 cards to the one in my first link, just inserted into a PCI card.

NONE of these I have linked to will need any sort of driver downloads or tweaks in 22.04.


if you have never replaced an m.2 style card, be aware that the antenna connectors are *tiny* and can be fragile and can be a pain to attach. \
PCI cards are dead easy, but won't fit in a laptop, of course.

The mini-PCI-E cards have larger antenna connections and seem more robust in that area. These are found in older systems. Not cross-compatible with the m.2 style.

[jlittle]

Is it really wireless, or wired? Is this a laptop?

Much shortened, probably irrelevant story about that driver:

My desktop has this ethernet interface, and it's part of the motherboard. I doubt it can be unplugged like a wireless card in a laptop.

Early revisions of the chip had a hardware bug which could cause it to lose connections. I used to download and build the driver, which helped.

However, the driver has been upstreamed to the kernel. The SourceForge page says "Bug fixes and changes are made upstream in the Linux kernel on kernel.org", updated 2021-07-20, and the Intel download page something similar.

So the driver download is not a good idea, and won't help.