Updating drivers again for Ubuntu 21.10
I'm glad that I sometimes remember to make a post when I learn something new. This is because my old 2019 post, Ubuntu 19.04 Disco Dingo Driver Drama is one that I keep referencing over and over again when my Wi-Fi dongle starts acting up.
I just updated Ubuntu to 21.10 to try and fix an issue with reawakening the system after it's been suspended. For the longest time everything worked just fine on 20.04, but within the past couple of months, it would intermittently not resume the next morning. I tried just updating the kernel to 5.13.0, but that caused even more instability.
Luckily, I had the earlier post that I could refer to, and was able to quickly figure out what was wrong and install a new driver.
In addition to the lsusb and dkms status checks that I referenced in the old post, I also learned about uname -a, which prints out the exact kernel for reference.
I also noticed that lsusb printed out a different chipset than I was expecting.
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 2357:0120 TP-Link Archer T2U PLUS [RTL8821AU]Notice that the number is 8821 instead of 8812. I've been using this dongle for about two years now, and never noticed that it had a different number, and the previous rtl8812au drivers were working fine. This is a different dongle than I was using in the original post.
I was having a hard time finding a driver for the rtl8812au chipset for Linux 5.13, but I was able to easily find one for the rtl8821au chipset.
The repo I found that fixed my driver issues is at https://github.com/morrownr/8821au-20210708/tree/2c0c6fef81c0c7dcf8fa06fc4ab72168abc4f7bb, and all I had to do was follow the directions in the README. No need to install separately with DKMS. I did double-check with dkms status, and it is correctly installed.
Hopefully this post helps resolve your Linux kernel/Ubuntu/TP-Link Wi-Fi dongle madness, and I personally hope I never have to reference it again. 😄