Wifi drivers for Fedora Silverblue

[dparos]

Hi all, I was wondering if anyone here uses Silverblue/Kinoite or any other immutable distro, and if so how to install wifi drivers as dkms does not work there. I recently switched to Silverblue and can't figure out how to install the RTL8821CU driver in that distro.

[morrownr]

Hi @dparos

I'm not familiar with Silverblue. A short explanation might help us help you. Is it a server distro?

Are you using the following driver?

https://github.com/morrownr/8821cu-20210118

[dparos]

Not familiar with silverblue?! Oh man you are in for a treat. Silverblue is the future of linux, along with other immutable distros like NixOS and ClearOS. But to give a really quick explanation, it's basically a distro where the file system is read-only (except for a few things like your home dir). You install everything via flatpak, and you can also install RPMs using a concept called layering. If you need to do something that requires root, you would open a container in a terminal using Toolbox or Distrobox. Here's a short video that explains it much better than I can: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q2PrISAOtbY

I'm new to silverblue so there's probably some way to get this driver to work that I'm not realizing. if not, it's no biggie I'll just buy a different wifi dongle that uses an in-kernel driver but I thought I'd ask here first.

I actually forked my own version of the 8821cu driver because there was some problem with the 6.0 kernel but I see it's been fixed now.

[morrownr]

I actually forked my own version of the 8821cu driver because there was some problem with the 6.0 kernel but I see it's been fixed now.

I'd recommend forking only if you realize how much work it takes to keep these Realtek drivers going. The need to update things as the kernel API's change is nearly constant. I do recommend cloning and then regularly pulling to keep the code on your system up to date...

$ git pull
$ sudo ./remove-driver.sh
$ sudo ./install-driver.sh

It is not mandatory to have dkms installed but dkms does provide some advantages. There is always manual installation:

Note: the first two items below are simply to update the code you have and to clear out any prior attempts to install.

$ git pull
$ sudo ./remove-driver.sh
$ make clean
$ make
$ sudo make install
$ sudo reboot

Wit that said, I have been reworking install-driver.sh for this specific driver as a test bed. It now detects if dkms is installed. If it is installed the it runs the dkms routines and if not installed, it automates the manual installation to save you some typing. Please feel free to test the new installation script. I'd appreciate a report.

Nick

[dparos]

Attempting to install in Silverblue, it gives this error:

install: cannot create regular file '/lib/modules/6.0.5-200.fc36.x86_64/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/8821cu.ko': Read-only file system

[morrownr]

That tells me the compilation went fine but it was unable to install the driver due to the file system being read only. Of course, you mentioned the read only thing but I have no idea how to overcome it at this point. This is something that I might have time to look at early next year but for now, my to-do list is overflowing. Your best bet right now might be to get an adapter with in-kernel drivers. Have you looked at Main Menu item 2?