Summary

This is a quick tutorial on how to fix the driver for the Alfa AWUS 1900 wifi card, and how to make the card work on Linux properly.

The problem

The driver for the Alfa AWUS 1900 wifi card was not working properly when I tried to install it and use the card. The card used to require a bit of work to set up properly on Linux, but all the old tutorials out there are unreliable or broken now. I haven’t found a single one, which actually works in 2022, so decided to make my own after a lof of initial trial and error with different driver versions and branches.

Solution

With the current kernel, the only reliable way to make the card work on Linux was to set the proper branch for the rtl8812au repository, which is maintained by not other than the aircrack-ng community themselves. Make sure your system is up-to-date, and that kernel headers are installed

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sudo apt update -y
sudo apt upgrade -y
sudo apt dist-upgrade -y
sudo apt autoclean -y
sudo apt autoremove -y

sudo apt install linux-headers-$(uname -r) -y
sudo apt install build-essential bc libelf-dev dkms -y

I’d recommend not plugging the card in for now, and first installing the drivers by running

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git clone -b v5.6.4.2 https://github.com/aircrack-ng/rtl8812au

cd rtl8812au

make

sudo make install

If this all runs successfully, we should be good!

I’m not sure if a restart is needed here, but to be sure, I’d recommend restarting the computer at this point.
Once the system is back up and running, we can run

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sudo dkms status

to see what happens when the card gets plugged in, but it’s not a requirement.

If everything went well, after plugging the card in now, it should work properly and should be able to handle monitor mode and perform wifi attacks again.