Just installed Ubuntu 20.04 on my laptop, replacing windows 10. My laptop's WiFi adapter (RTL8821CE) drivers weren't installed automatically, and I have no ethernet port so I have to manually do it. I found a guide online on how to download it but it assumes I have internet to download dkms. So I wanted to ask how do I manually download that as well?
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Can you link to the guide? – Pixelated Fish Oct 14 '20 at 23:10
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Can you USB tether to a smart phone? – Jeremy31 Oct 14 '20 at 23:17
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dkms is nice to have but is not necessary... It is really convenient... But I don't think it will prevent you from installing your drivers... you will just need to reinstall them when there is a kernel update... which you wont be receiving, until your drivers are there... just install dkms before your kernel update so you dont end up in the same situation.... – WU-TANG Oct 14 '20 at 23:56
3 Answers
I would assume whatever guide you followed says to use the command sudo apt install dkms
. If you cannot tether to a phone or other device, as suggested by Jeremy31, you can download the .deb file manually from The Ubuntu packages website for the appropriate version, and copy it via a flash drive. You can then install it with sudo apt install /media/flashDriveName/package.deb
.

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If your wifi worked during your install, use the live CD/USB that you used to do your install to boot "Try wihtout Installing" and configure internet access. Mount your drive so you can have access to your home directory... And download your drivers and dkms and drop them in your Downloads folder(or wherever)... apt-get download dkms
is the command to download the dkms package. Then boot back up into your system and you can install like sudo dpkg -i dkms-blah-blah.deb
With that said, I'm not totally sure that dkms doesnt have a bunch of dependencies and I didnt feel like uninstalling it on my system and reinstalling to find out... SOOOOO, you may end up going back and forth trying to downloading new dependencies that you are going to be told that you need and the dependencies of the dependencies and the dependencies of those..... if that ends up being the case, I will append a download dependency script that I found years ago somewhere that does a decent job of pulling down all dependencies recursively..
Or if it is basically a fresh install anyway, just redo the install and check the download updates from the internet box while installing(ONLY IF YOU BELIEVE THAT WILL CATCH YOUR WIFI DRIVERS)
The dependency download script...
First off, if the creator of this script recognizes it, Thank You, it saved me a ton of times when I was working on an offline network... I may have tweaked it, I really don't remember...
vi a file(or your favorite text editor, i use vi)... vi dependencyscript.sh
and add the following lines, then save and exit... make sure the file is executable chmod 755 dependencyscript.sh
#!/bin/bash
export MAXPARAMETERS=255
function array_contains_find_index() {
local n=$#
local i=0
local value=${!n}
for (( i=1; i < n; i++ )) {
if [ "${!i}" == "${value}" ]; then
echo "REMOVING $i: ${!i} = ${value}"
return $i
fi
}
return $MAXPARAMETERS
}
LIST=( $( apt-rdepends $1 | grep -v "^ " ) )
echo ${LIST[*]}
read -n1 -r -p "... Packages that will be downloaded (Continue or CTRL+C) ..."
RESULTS=( $( apt-get download ${LIST[*]} |& cut -d' ' -f 8 ) )
LISTLEN=${#LIST[@]}
while [ ${#RESULTS[@]} -gt 0 ]; do
for (( i=0; i < $LISTLEN; i++ )); do
array_contains_find_index ${RESULTS[@]} ${LIST[$i]}
ret=$?
if (( $ret != $MAXPARAMETERS )); then
unset LIST[$i]
fi
done
FULLRESULTS=$( apt-get download ${LIST[*]} 2>&1 )
RESULTS=( $( echo $FULLRESULTS |& cut -d' ' -f 11 | sed -r "s/'(.*?):(.*$)/\1/g" ) )
done
apt-get download ${LIST[*]}
After you figure out the name of the package you want to download ie dkms you use it as such, and hopefully it should pull down all the dependent packages along with it.. I suggest creating a folder and running it inside there.
./dependencyscript.sh dkms
you should end up with a folder full of the packages you need to install dkms (or whichever package you are downloading for offline)...
Hopefully all of this is unnecessary

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Hey guys thanks for the answers , I really appreciate the help. I ended up Bluetooth tethering (something which I didn't know I could do before), downloaded the driver through "Software and Updates" and rebooted my device. I had a problem with understanding how secure boot worked so the adapter wouldn't show up for a bit longer until I realised I needed to authorise it in secure boot (enroll muc or whatever). That did the job and I can use wi-fi now, thanks everyone!