Updated on January 6, 2016
Linksys AE6000 wireless AC USB adapter in Linux
The Linksys AE6000 is a nice little wireless AC adapter that you can purchase from places like Fred Meyers or Best Buy. It’s not too expensive for what it offers. The speed is decent too. The problem, once again, comes down to Cisco not offering driver support for Linux. Luckily pintu on HPRATH found a solution and linked to some drivers that you can compile.
Because I didn’t have internet access when I performed his steps, I decided to skip the git part and simply link to the compressed file. You can download this tar file to a USB drive and copy it to the computer with the AE6000 wifi dongle.
Once the file has been copied, extract it to a folder in your user directory and run the following commands to install the driver.
cd mediatek_mt7610u_sta_driver_linux-64bit make clean make sudo make install
Now that this is installed, simply connect the AE6000 to a USB port and connect to your wireless network!
I went to this page right on linux Firefox and downloaded the compressed file and then extracted it. There is now a AE600 folder in root. When I try and gain access to the folder on the terminal to install it says the folder doesn’t exist but it does I can see it in Dolphin. What am I doing wrong?
Thanks
If you open the tar file you’ll see a folder in it. Drop that folder into your ~/Downloads directory, then open the ~/Downloads/AE6000/mediatek_mt7610u_sta_driver_linux-64bit directory in your terminal and issue the make commands from there. You don’t need the AE6000 folder on your root.
I haave the drivers installed and the usb plugged in. It shows in my network settings, but is greyed out and won’t let me click it. It simply defaults to the internal wifi card…..which stinks. Any ideas?
Thanks
Here’s a comment from Ask Ubuntu on how to disable the internal wireless card and allow the USB card to take over. I would suggest trying it out.
iface wlan0 inet manual
NetworManager doesn’t manage interfaces configured in the interfaces file. Replace wlan0 with the interface you want to disable, if it’s not the name of the built-in interface.
Then restart network manager
sudo service network-manager restart”
http://askubuntu.com/questions/168032/how-to-disable-built-in-wifi-and-use-only-usb-wifi-card
i was using this setup with Ubuntu 15.10 but unfortunately seems broken in 16.04 lts. No errors in make/make install but when AE6000 is plugged, is not seen by the system at all.
sudo ifconfig ra0 up. Then it should work.
I was also using this for ubuntu 14.04; I tried on 16.04 and it does not work, as Jared said. With sudo ifconfig ra0 up, the device lights up and says with the blue light on; it shows up in the output of ifconfig, but still I cannot use it. It doesn’t show up in the list of network connections. Any ideas?
FYI, at this point, I ran
sudo service network-manager restart
and now everything works smoothly.
Still, I have to run these commands every time I login (‘ifconfig ra0 up’ and ‘sudo service network-manager restart’)
Thanks a lot for your software.
Thanks for the followup. I apologize for not having enough time to check your questions. As for your commands, you can add them to the bottom of your ~/.profile file and they’ll be run automatically whenever you login.
Works perfect on Ubuntu Mate 14.04 (Trusty)
Hi, this has worked wonders me.
Now I want to try my raspberry pi with xbian 32bits.
It is possible? There is a version of the driver for 32 bit?
Thank you!
This works great, but I can’t see any of my AC/5ghz Networks to get the faster speed. Am I doing something wrong or is this a limitation of the driver?
Thanks
Wondering if you ever got your 5G working. I have the same problem.
Worked exactly as written with Ubuntu 14.04 (64). No restart or reboot. Connects automatically to the 5GHz wifi. I get about 30M up and down (my line is 100M), enough for a work PC. Thanks!
Thank you for this post.
For other peeps that have issues after finishing “sudo make install”. Execute these commands:
sudo ifconfig ra0 up
sudo service network-manager restart
Strange. I installed the stick EXACTLY as in the blog and it worked right away and flawless – for about 10 days. Then it suddenly stopped. Had to re-install, and it works again now.
Update to my issue:
It seems that every time Ubuntu does a little update the driver get kicked out. Is there a way to make it work constantly?
Today I had to re-install the driver again as a new install. However, right after reboot it connected to Wifi – without asking for the password.
No one else seems to have encountered this, but the compile fails for me. This is a fresh 16.10 installation for dual boot with Win10, and I am trying to get the excellent AE6000 up and running. I get multiple compile errors, the first of which is an incompatible pointer error. If I fix it, I run into another, and then another, etc. I eventually hit one which can’t be resolved by a simple type modification, or cast. I have done all steps recommended by the (more involved) AskUbuntu thread, and tried 3 separate sources for the code, and nothing changes. So it seems there are some compiler switches missing, or something. Ideas?
It worked perfect. Thank you very much friend. Regards!.
I am a 34yr oldp smart techie that’s new to Linux and trying to learn. I’ve installed a dual boot Win10/Mint 18.1. I copied the file to my Download folder and extracted it there. On the mediatek folder I selected: Actions: Open Terminal Here. Then I entered the above commands. The make command gives a ‘fatal error: studio.h: no such file or directory’ I don’t know if this has something to do with me needing owner permissions or if I have placed the folder in the wrong location. When I try to place the folder in the root usr folder, as it mentions in the directions above, i still get the same error.
So I had KDE. I switched to Cinnamon. Same problem, but my Tenda wireless card worked automatically. I did all the available updates, then the above process worked for the AE6000. So to anyone getting errors during the make or install process, I suggest using a hardwire internet connection to do all updates first. However it’s still only working on 2.4 and doesn’t even see the 5Ghz. :'(
I’ve added the ifconfig and the restart commands to my .profile, but I’m assuming I did it wrong as its not working until I enter it manually. When I do, I have to enter my password. I’m guessing that’s where I’m doing it wrong. Can you direct me in the proper way to add this to my .profile?
make fails for me on Ubuntu 16.04.
scripts/Makefile.build:289: recipe for target ‘/home … /chips/rtmp_chip.0’ failed.
Hello. I am using this for linksys AC580. The make command and the sudo make install command are giving me errors and the usb is not working.
What can i do in this case?
Thank you for your help.
Do you have an update for Ubuntu 17.04?
After trying to build the driver using git, which failed with an unresolved reference, I decided to follow your method. The process seemed to proceed smoothly, until I got a series of compilation error ending in failed make. Here I should mention that I was using Inspiron 1100 which is a 32 bit machine. Perhaps there is a 32 bit version of the driver, I am including the last few lines from the log:
/linux/../../chips/rtmp_chip.o
/home/stan/Documents/AE6000/mediatek_mt7610u_sta_driver_linux-64bit/os/linux/../../chips/rtmp_chip.c: In function ‘RtmpChipOpsHook’:
/home/stan/Documents/AE6000/mediatek_mt7610u_sta_driver_linux-64bit/os/linux/../../chips/rtmp_chip.c:910:30: error: assignment from incompatible pointer type [-Werror=incompatible-pointer-types]
pChipOps->ChipSwitchChannel = Default_ChipSwitchChannel;
^
cc1: some warnings being treated as errors
scripts/Makefile.build:294: recipe for target ‘/home/stan/Documents/AE6000/mediatek_mt7610u_sta_driver_linux-64bit/os/linux/../../chips/rtmp_chip.o’ failed
make[2]: *** [/home/stan/Documents/AE6000/mediatek_mt7610u_sta_driver_linux-64bit/os/linux/../../chips/rtmp_chip.o] Error 1
Makefile:1524: recipe for target ‘_module_/home/stan/Documents/AE6000/mediatek_mt7610u_sta_driver_linux-64bit/os/linux’ failed
make[1]: *** [_module_/home/stan/Documents/AE6000/mediatek_mt7610u_sta_driver_linux-64bit/os/linux] Error 2
make[1]: Leaving directory ‘/usr/src/linux-headers-4.10.0-19-generic’
Makefile:393: recipe for target ‘LINUX’ failed
make: *** [LINUX] Error 2
stan@stan-Inspiron-1100:~/Documents/AE6000/mediatek_mt7610u_sta_driver_linux-64bit$ ^C
stan@stan-Inspiron-1100:~/Documents/AE6000/mediatek_mt7610u_sta_driver_linux-64bit
I attempted to build the driver on Lubuntu 17.04 . The compiler threw “incompatible pointer” while compiling the line 910 of rtmp_chip.c file in chip folder. Now what? What is the most recent version of Linux that successfully builds this driver?
While I am quite familiar with the Windows Visual Studio, I am totally blank on any of the linux tools.
I hate to ask this but I suck at life when it comes to Linux. I have always been around dos, windows, and apple pcs most of my life more so the microsoft end of things.
So I downloaded the archive, and I have tried copping the files in my home directory, and downloads but I have no idea what the terminal codes are in reference to. I get an error every time.
How would I use the above code if say the folder “mediatek_mt7610u_sta_driver_linux-64bit” was placed on my desktop? I am running Ubuntu 17.10 64Bit edition, at least till I go nuts & reinstall Windows 10.
Thanks for the help!
Maybe someone already know about it, make AE6000 driver support 5GHz normally,
You should clone and build the latest source code that located in ‘https://github.com/xtknight/mt7610u-linksys-ae6000-wifi-fixes.git’.
I’ve confirmed it works well.
Hi there,
Any recent updates on the process you outlined? I’ve tried this in the latest version of Lubuntu but alas ’tis not working.
Any help would be kindly appreciated.
Thank you so much