Preface
It all started when I wanted to install the driver for my Netgear A7000 USB wifi adapter, which requires the Realtek rtl8812au wifi controller.
Previously, I had a Jetson Nano 2GB running on JetPack 4.6.1. IIRC, the Linux Headers that came with it was release 4.9.337-tegra, which made it incompatible with many Makefile buildchains because the Makefiles look for $(uname -r) which is 4.9.253-tegra. Can a NVIDIAN answer my question about why a those two versions might be different? Thanks.
Afterwards, I reflashed my microSD card to run JetPack 4.6, which has release 4.9.253-tegra out the box so that eliminated the version mismatch problem. But installing rtl8812au was still an issue.
I went from guide to guide. Each offered a solution that seems to work but not quite. First was this one. In the Makefile of the repo I download, there is no option to build for the Nano. If I try to build it with a target of i386_PC or other, it fails. On a sidenote, the guide tells me to install rtl8814au (not need for Nano) and if I choose the build target as ARM64, it does work.
I followed the steps of my second guide exactly, but after a reboot, my Nano is still not showing me wlan options. It doesn’t recognize my A7000 as a wifi adapter.
This third link seemed promising as well, but it still did not work for me after a reboot.
Solution
Finally, I found it. I typed in the commands as specified exactly, rebooted, and voila! Thank you pratapkygo I am indebted to you.
The thing about pratapkygo’s installation is that rtl8812au 5.6.4.2 has the ‘ppa’ suffix located in /usr/src. I’m not sure what that does. I’m new to linux as well, so can someone explain to me what /usr/src is for? Is it just copied source files to compile into the /bin folder?
I hope this helps some of you out there!