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My 24.04 install is not recognizing the wifi adapter that came with my motherboard (Realtek 6 wifi/bluetooth rtw89_8851be). The confusing thing is that it recognized it during the install using the ISO usb drive, and it even worked on the first boot from drive. But hasn't since.

Since then I've tried installing the driver using Baeldung's instructions for installing a realtek driver using both lwfinger and kelebek333 PPAs, these (Network Driver for Realtek 10ec:b852) instructions b/c OP had a similar output to mine but was asked for a u/n and pw that I didn't have, and reinstalled Ubuntu which now never recognizes the wifi adapter. I've tried other instructions for 8852b drivers just substituting the correct driver name in place of 8852b (e.g., rtw89 or 8851be).

None of it has worked. Someone else suggested installing an Intel AX210NGWG chipset, but I don't know if that will fix the issue. They said it should work on both, but so should have Realtek. And I'd like not to spend anymore money on what's supposed to work according to other Ubuntu users. I'm trying here in case someone has run into this exact issue.

To provide context: I have Windows 11 and Ubuntu installed on separate internal SSDs Asus Z790-V AX motherboard Intel i9 12900k cpu Realtek 89-8851be wifi adapter

FLAN - Legacy
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2 Answers2

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Unless you've been very careful, you have piled change upon change, more or less at random. In the SysAdmin world, it's called "stirring your system with a root stick", and doesn't solve problems. Prepare to reinstall.

Boot your install medium in "Try Ubuntu" mode. It's the same Ubuntu that the installer uses, so it should recognize your WiFi.

Open a command line terminal (CTRL-ALT-T).

These commands, and their outputs (which are worth saving on another USB key) will provide you with information you need:

# which modules are loaded to support WiFi? 
lsmod

You will need the same modules later.

Look at the network logs with the terminal command: sudo journalctl -b 0 -u NetworkManager. Also do: service NetworkManager status and service --status-all.

Also, look at ip link, ip route, ip address.

Find out which package provides the module (from lsmod) with dpkg -S module, and make sure to install it.

cd to your writable medium, and apt download package. cd -, eject -v $OLDPWD

Do the install.

Do until you have WiFi:

  1. Insert your writable USB stick, open a terminal window, cd to the USB stick.

  2. Do sudo dpkg -i *.deb. If there are no errors, you win! If there are error messages, save them on the writeable USB stick.

  3. cd -, eject -v $OLDPWD

  4. Boot your install medium in "Try Ubuntu" mode.

  5. Open a command line terminal.

  6. Insert the writeable USB stick, cd to it.

  7. Using the error messages from Step 2, apt download each required package.

  8. cd -, eject -v $OLDPWD.

  9. Boot back into your installed system.

  10. Go back to step 1.

You shouldn't need more than 3-4 times around Steps 1 through 10 to get to 0 errors.

Then do: sudo systemctl networking restart (I may have misremembered this), or reboot.

waltinator
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In my case, it helped to simply activate USB Tethering from my mobile phone, install the latest updates, and after the next reboot, the WiFi adapter started working.

Zhart
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