How to find out which Wi-Fi driver is installed?
$ readlink /sys/class/net/wlan0/device/driver
../../../../bus/pci/drivers/ath5k
In other words, the /sys
hierarchy for the device (/sys/class/net/$interface/device
) contains a symbolic link to the /sys
hierarchy for the driver. There you'll also find a symbolic link to the /sys
hierarchy for the module, if applicable. This applies to most devices, not just wireless interfaces.
Maybe there's a better way, but I've used lshw -class network
(as root) and it gives me this output:
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: 82566MM Gigabit Network Connection
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 19
bus info: pci@0000:00:19.0
logical name: eth0
version: 03
serial: 00:a0:d1:a3:87:c8
size: 1GB/s
capacity: 1GB/s
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=e1000e driverversion=1.0.2-k2 duplex=full firmware=0.3-0 ip=192.168.2.206 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=1GB/s
resources: irq:29 memory:fc300000-fc31ffff memory:fc325000-fc325fff ioport:1840(size=32)
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:06:00.0
logical name: wlan0
version: 61
serial: 00:1d:e0:69:28:07
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlagn ip=192.168.0.104 latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn
resources: irq:31 memory:c8000000-c8001fff
*-network DISABLED
description: Ethernet interface
physical id: 3
logical name: vboxnet0
serial: 0a:00:27:00:00:00
capabilities: ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes multicast=yes
You can grep for driver
from that output. In my case I use lsmod | grep iwlagn
, giving me:
iwlagn 63559 0
iwlcore 67702 1 iwlagn
mac80211 123574 2 iwlagn,iwlcore
cfg80211 87657 3 iwlagn,iwlcore,mac80211
Don't ask me what each of those mean :)
If you're interested in USB based WiFi devices then you can see the driver name by using the lsusb
command:
lsusb -t