I bought an USB-wifi-adapter "TP-Link TL-WDN5200H" for my ubuntu server, whose core chip is "RTL8811CU" (ID: 0x0bda:0xc811) by The Realtek Corp., but this product only has official driver for WINDOWS system.
To make it work on ubuntu, I have searched for many relavent guides on the Internet, such as Driver for rtl8811cu? - Ubuntu Forums and TP-LINK TL-WDN5200 usb wifi adapter install on ubuntu?. But they didn't solve my problem until I found that "rtl8821cu driver source code contains some support for rtl8811cu" in alteman's rtl8821cu repo as follow.
#ifdef CONFIG_RTL8821C
/*=== Realtek demoboard ===*/
...
{USB_DEVICE_AND_INTERFACE_INFO(USB_VENDER_ID_REALTEK, 0xC811, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff), .driver_info = RTL8821C}, /* 8811CU */
...
/*=== Customer ID ===*/
#endif
I changed a little in Makefile of alteman's repo for compiling on i386-PC platform.
And finally, the compiled driver can drive my USB-wifi-adapter on ubuntu.
copy the whole repo to your PC, enter (your_dir)/rtl8821cu/, open a terminal and type:
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe 8821cu
the driver installed.
If wifi can be detected, congratulations. If not, maybe you need to switch your device usb mode by the following steps in terminal:
- find your usb-wifi-adapter device ID, like "0bda:1a2b", by type:
lsusb
- switch the mode by type: (the device ID must be yours.)
sudo usb_modeswitch -KW -v 0bda -p 1a2b
It should work.
I think this driver source code can be compiled for a series of Realtek wifi devices by minor changes with Makefile.