Meaning of "Firmware: N/A"?

[mgb17]

Hello all, I am new to Linux so I had a very basic question-

I have the Realtek Network Adaptor on my computer with the driver rtl8188ee.

When I run "lshw -c network" command, I get the all the details about the hardware but it says "Firmware: N/A" does it mean that there is no firmware on the adapter? is that even possible?

Thanks in advance

 

[Brickwizard]

welcome to linux.org
you do not say what distribution you are running
realtek are a known problem, the rtl8188 drivers became available from
Linux Kernel 4.17
i don't know if it will work for you, but this is one possible solution
sudo apt update && sudo apt -y dist-upgrade
sudo apt install net-tools
sudo reboot

 

[mgb17]

Hii Thanks for your reply, I am sorry, I am running CentOS8, I tried running the CentOS equivalent command of the above, it did not work

 

[KGIII]

Hmm... I can't make mine say anything about firmware at all. So, first I'd ask if the device is working properly? If it is, I'd not worry about it. Second, I'd ask if you ran it with root privileges? Try 'sudo lshw -c network' to see if you get more robust results.

 

[mgb17]

Hmm... I can't make mine say anything about firmware at all. So, first I'd ask if the device is working properly? If it is, I'd not worry about it. Second, I'd ask if you ran it with root privileges? Try 'sudo lshw -c network' to see if you get more robust results.

Yes the device is working fine, and i also tried with the sudo command but no luck, I needed the firmware version to update a report I am working on

 

[KGIII]

Try this:

sudo ethtool -i wlo1

Change wlo1 to the name of your device. You should get an output like this:

[email protected]:~$ sudo ethtool -i wlo1
driver: iwlwifi
version: 5.8.0-59-generic
firmware-version: 55.d9698065.0 QuZ-a0-jf-b0-55.u
expansion-rom-version: 
bus-info: 0000:00:14.3
supports-statistics: yes
supports-test: no
supports-eeprom-access: no
supports-register-dump: no
supports-priv-flags: no

 

[mgb17]

Try this:

sudo ethtool -i wlo1

Change wlo1 to the name of your device. You should get an output like this:

[email protected]:~$ sudo ethtool -i wlo1
driver: iwlwifi
version: 5.8.0-59-generic
firmware-version: 55.d9698065.0 QuZ-a0-jf-b0-55.u
expansion-rom-version:
bus-info: 0000:00:14.3
supports-statistics: yes
supports-test: no
supports-eeprom-access: no
supports-register-dump: no
supports-priv-flags: no

Unfortunately it still says N/A for me at the firmware version field

 

[KGIII]

Hmm... That sums up everything I could think of off-hand. Maybe someone else will have some ideas.

 

[mgb17]

Try this:

sudo ethtool -i wlo1

Change wlo1 to the name of your device. You should get an output like this:

[email protected]:~$ sudo ethtool -i wlo1
driver: iwlwifi
version: 5.8.0-59-generic
firmware-version: 55.d9698065.0 QuZ-a0-jf-b0-55.u
expansion-rom-version:
bus-info: 0000:00:14.3
supports-statistics: yes
supports-test: no
supports-eeprom-access: no
supports-register-dump: no
supports-priv-flags: no

Thanks a lot for your help though!

 

[JasKinasis]

Try searching for any Realtek firmware packages using dnf:

dnf search firmware | \grep realtek

I don’t use any rpm distros, but if that search yields any results, it might be worth trying to install whatever packages are listed.