How can I check the information of currently installed WiFi drivers?
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
instructslspci
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 containing0280
, 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.
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.