How can I check the information of currently installed WiFi drivers?

Question

When I clicked on additional drivers on Ubuntu 12.04, I could not see any drivers.. How can I check what drivers are installed for WiFi on Ubuntu environment.

Answer 1

The following commands are run in a terminal. Open one by Ctrl+Alt+T.

To check what drivers your wireless adapter is currently using, you may run the following command:

sudo lshw -C network

• lshw lists information on your hardware
• -C network filters the output to only show the network class.

In the output, look for the entry with description: Wireless interface.

Here's the output from my Ubuntu:

alaa@aa-lu:~$ sudo lshw -C network
[sudo] password for alaa: 
  *-network               
       description: Wireless interface
       product: RTL8723AE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
       vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:08:00.0
       logical name: wlan0
       version: 00
       serial: 24:ec:99:21:c9:29
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=rtl8723ae driverversion=3.8.0-27-generic firmware=N/A ip=192.168.1.74 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11bgn
       resources: irq:17 ioport:3000(size=256) memory:c3000000-c3003fff

In the configuration line (line before last), you'll see the driver currently being used by my card. I've highlighted it in the output.

Alternatively, you can use the command:

lspci -nnk | grep -A2 0280

• lspci lists information on your PCI connected cards
• -nnk instructs lspci to output more information about these cards (including the driver being used)
• | pipes the output to the next command
• grep 0280 filters the output to show lines containing 0280, which is the PCI class code for wireless PCI controllers in Ubuntu.
• -A2 shows two more lines of information.

Here's the output from my Ubuntu:

08:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8723AE PCIe Wireless Network Adapter [10ec:8723]
    Subsystem: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device [10ec:0724]
    Kernel driver in use: rtl8723ae

Once you determine the driver you're using, you can use the following command to show more information about it:

modinfo <driver-name>

---

To check what wireless drivers you currently have installed, but not necessarily being used by anything, you can do the following command:

find /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/net/wireless -name '*.ko'

The above command will list all drivers you have installed. This will probably be an exhaustive list, because these are preinstalled drivers on your Ubuntu to make it possible for people to use their wireless drivers as soon as they install Ubuntu.

Answer 2

The following method includes the installation of additional software, which name is hardinfo.

You can search and install hardinfo, from USC

or

from terminal (CTRL+ALT+T) apply the following command

sudo apt-get install -y hardinfo 

Locate hardinfo from Dash (by writing: hardinfo), open it and goto PCI Devices if your Wireless adapter is an integrated PCI device.

Next to Kernel modules is the current loaded driver of the specified Wireless adapter. In example picture is ath9k

If your Wireless adapter is a USB device, then goto the corresponding entry on the left list under Devices.

Answer 3

You can also try:

ethtool -i wlan0 | grep driver

this gives the current loaded driver for your wlan card with output like this:

uchiha@Hokage:~$ ethtool -i wlan0 | grep driver  
driver: brcmsmac 

which is my driver for wi-fi card. If you don't have ethtool you can install it by:

sudo apt-get install ethtool

Answer 4

You can use this command:

sudo lspci -nn -v -s your socket        

Answer 5

Try

lsmod

to check if the module r8169 is existed by: If it is not then add it by:

sudo modprobe r8169

This solved the problem for me.

Answer 6

sudo update-pciids

# lspci
## PCI
lspci
lspci | more
lspci | less
lspci | grep -i intel
lspci | grep -i broadcom
lspci | grep -i wireless
lspci -k | more
lspci | egrep -i 'wifi|wireless|intel|broadcom|realtek'

# Enter
lspci -vv -s 0c:00.0

# lshw
## list hardware, command may not be installed
lshw -C network
lshw -C network | more

# lsusb
## USB WiFi device
lsusb