Card Wifi Mediatek

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Marie Ota

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Aug 3, 2024, 6:10:40 PM8/3/24

to winscentksisal

I recently bought a MediaTek MT7916 for use in a wireless router that I am building. Unfortunately, I'm having issues getting the card detected by OpenWRT. Here's a list of the troubleshooting steps I've taken. Most are hardware-related but I have done some software-related shenanigans based on my level of expertise, all of which have failed:

I sshed into the router (firrst time I've ever sshed into something I might add) and installed the programs that allow you to do lspci. I don't see the wifi card on the list, however. It's plugged in though.

Hmmmm... I don't know if that is going to be a factor. It's a different motherboard than what I'm using at home but a PCI Express slot can, if built to proper spec, provide up to 9.9W of power alone to a 1x card, (3.3V at 3A). This exceeds the 9W that the card can theoretically draw. That said, definitely possible.

True, however, a regular PCIe x2 slot provides up to 4 pins with +3.3V (and 9? ground pins on a quick count). If the adapter, in the assumption that mPCIe typically needs only about max. 1A doesn't connect all of them, it depends on how the pins are connected on the board, conductivity of the connector, ...

I installed OpenWRT master on a virtual machine running in Proxmox and the card it detected inside the VM when using lspci, also I see the firmware and the modules are loaded but I do not see any network interfaces.

I tried both with the 5.15 kernel and 6.1 testing kernel and results are the same. Curiously when I use the same card on an Archlinux VM in Proxmox runing on kernel 6.6 it is detected and I'm able to see the two interfaces since it is a DBDC card.

I just tested and booted OpenWRT from an USB stick (directly on bare metal) and the result is the same. The Wifi card is detected I see the modules are loaded but I cannot see any wlan interface being shown.
Also as I mentioned in my previous post on another VM running Archlinux kernel 6.6.2 same hardware the card is detected and I see 2 wifi interfaces.

I've just ordered the AED myself from AsiaRF. Waiting for it to arrive. Not sure when, still saying order processsing but I'd like to be armed and ready to deal with any problems that could present once it gets here. Thank you

Until recently I since I could not make it work back then on OpenWRT I did not used it, but in the last week just tried again and I compiled a new OpenWRT x86 image using the 6.6 testing kernel (trunk version) and I deployed it on Proxmox as VM to use it as an access point and PCI passthrough the Mediatek AW7916-AED card to it.

I struggled a lot to make it work since using the default BIOS options I experieced a lot of hangs and VM freeezes. In the end somehow I managed to make it work by modifying a different BIOS options but I'm not entirely sure it is stable so I will need to test it for a couple of days or a week before I can use it in the long run.

If you plan to use it directly on OpenWRT without virtualization (direct install on the hardware) it might work without issues. The setup I'm using is an Aliexpress mini PC with Proxmox installed on it and OPNsense as firewall + OpenWRT as access point both as virtual machines.

Thanks for the update. Thats really helpful. I will be using it bare metal to test out initially when it arrives but was planning eventually to run it as a container in proxmox, until this morning I ran into a few threads about openwrt unpriviliged containers struggling with PPPoE. Unfortunately Im not a proper hobbyist or developer. Just an ordinary layperson who was searching for (I know its not recommmended) a home all-in-one solution with 6GHz radio and cloud server test bed.

I have an Asus VivoBook 5, which has a mediatek wifi card and no ethernet port. The stable/offical debian 11 distro does not seem to have mediatek firmware and I am new to installing firmware on linux.

It is not enabled in the kernel. You need to recompile your kernel, there is no dkms installable package. If you are unfamiliar, and want to learn a bunch. Try. If you do not have the time, USB. -Peace

I've been running Zorin on this Asus Vivobook for about 6 months without issue. Booted up this week to find no wi-fi. Ethernet still functional and detect no other device issues. Other than routine updates, I have not installed, changed or uninstalled any apps. Wi-fi works fine in Windows 11.

I run Zorin from a Fit drive with Windows 11 running from internal drive. Fast boot is disabled. After trying web search suggestions, I did another separate install on an identical Fit drive with the same result. I then tried an install of Ubuntu 22.04 just to see whether that would work. Same failure.

Can we also get you to open "Software Updater"
let it load up, then click the "Settings" button,
This will open "Software & Updates" 1st open the TAB "Other Software", please select the "Canonical Partners" ( just the first one unless you also use/want the "source code" aswell).
The open the "Addition Drivers" TAB, & let it search/load, see if there is a driver for the Wifi, if so select & apply.
Then run the "Software Updater" after applying any changes.

Can i also ask, do you have "Fast startup disabled?
if not follow this guide please.
How to disable Fast Startup
If you needed to disable the Fast Startup, it is suggested to then run the Windows update after doing so.
Then re-enter Zorin OS & again run the updater.
Keep us informed.

-Screenshot attached for network.
-Canonical Partners was already selected.
-There was no driver available on the Additional Drivers tab. The only drivers there are Nvidia drivers. No apparent drivers for wifi card.
-Fast Startup was already disabled (I disabled it at the beginning of this troubleshooting effort).

Still have not found a solution to his issue. If anyone has other suggestions, please offer them up. In the meantime, I did buy a cheap USB wifi adapter to get by. If anyone encounters an issue with their Mediatek (or other brand) wifi like I did, here is a product that works out of the box and was only $10USD.

Final update. It turns out that my MT7922 was defective...or evil. Though it has continued to work with Windows, it has started to exhibit other problems. For instance, it did recently stop connecting in Windows 11. I was able to reset it using a 60 second press of the power button, but even then there were issues. Finally, when it stopped allowing me to cast to my TV in Windows, I decided it was time to give up.

Replacing it with a different adapter has fixed everything and even fixed something I hadn't attributed to the wifi card; trackpad stuttering. The built-in trackpad in my notebook has been stuttering in Zorin from day one. But, since replacing the wifi card, it stutters no more.