Date: Wed, 22 Jan 2014 18:12:08 -0800
From: Greg KH <gregkh@linuxfoundation.org>
To: Larry Finger <Larry.Finger@lwfinger.net>
Cc: linux-wireless@vger.kernel.org
Subject: Re: Realtek 8821 wireless PCI driver?
Message-ID: <20140123021208.GA13639@kroah.com> (sfid-20140123_031123_038757_27CD9AC7)
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 <52E066A1.9010009@lwfinger.net>
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On Wed, Jan 22, 2014 at 06:47:29PM -0600, Larry Finger wrote:
> On 01/20/2014 01:32 PM, Greg KH wrote:
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I have a box here with a Realtek 8821 wireless PCI device.  We don't
> > seem to have a driver upstream for it yet, but there's a huge tarball
> > from Realtek on their site.
> >
> > Has anyone started picking the needed pieces out of the tarball to get
> > this merged "properly", or does this need to be done yet?
> >
> > Hm, I wonder if I should just dump the tarball into staging for now, to
> > get my box working, any objections to me doing that?
> 
> I have had contact with the Realtek developers regarding a Linux driver for the 
> RTL8821AE device with PCI ID 10ec:8821. On Dec 10, 2013, they indicated that 
> there were still 802.11ac problems, and they were not yet ready to release it to 
> me. I will write them again and check if the driver is now ready, and they just 
> forgot to send it to me. Once they are ready, they will also be sending me 
> sample devices.
> 
> What is the URL for the driver that you found? I did a quick search on their 
> site and did not find it.

It came with a device I got at a conference, along with 1,000 other
people, so it's being used in the "wild" now, running Linux.  I'll send
you the patch off-list as it's not small.

> To answer your question, I certainly would have no objections to your dumping 
> the driver into staging. I can fix it up there as easily as in my own private 
> stores. You will, of course, get a lot more intermediate patches, but I think 
> you have already anticipated that. The PCI group usually send me mac80211-based 
> drivers, thus the residence in staging may be short, but that is desirable.

Ok, I spent an hour or so trying to see if I could just use the existing
rtlwifi module with this driver, but it seems that they are using a 2
year-old version of it, so I'll have to bundle it directly into the
driver for now, along with an "odd" bluetooth sharing module.  I'll work
on making the needed changes to the driver to get it to work with
rtlwifi first, and then clean up the rest over the next few months.  I
have the hardware here to test with, so that should make it easier than
the normal staging driver work I do.

But for now, staging seems like a good idea, especially as one "distro"
is already shipping it in this form (SteamOS).

thanks,

greg k-h