morrownr
commented
2 years ago Hi @Darkyere
Thanks for the report and please accept my apology.
In my enthusiasm to help, I think I ended up causing you a lot of unnecessary work. Networking cards and adapters have pci and usb IDs that are used by drivers to see if they support the hardware. I incorrectly assumed that this AX181 used a pci ID that only went into the kernel somewhat recently which would have meant that your 5.13 kernel driver would not have recognized and supported the AX181. We now know that is not the case and the AX181 uses a pci ID that is supported in kernels 5.12 and later. When Ubuntu 22.04 is released with kernel 5.15, the AX181 should just work (for your purposes.)
Now, when I say for your purposes above, what I mean is dual band client mode operation. Remember that the AX181 is actually a tri-band card but that doesn't matter until you have a 6 GHz capable wifi router/AP and I would not get in a hurry to buy one until things have matured. After seeing your performance numbers, you might be close enough already that we can tweak it to get what you need.
Can I get you to post the results of:
$ sudo iw phy phy0 info...assuming that your new card is phy0.
We can take a look at signal strength with
wavemonRegards
Darkyere
amisix
This as promised is the report on the "AX181 Plus" WiFi PCE-E card as discussed in
Advice on a good range and speed USB WiFi dongle
This is only the first attempt at making it work, in short it worked out of the box. But i will continue the test's when Ubuntu 22.04 comes out. The kernel 5.17 had to many unavailable dependencies for Ubuntu 20.04. And i might not be the best to make these drasting changes to the system to make kernel 5.17 work.
More info about the process down below.
If u like u can skip to the bottom part called
The last attempt
To skip the long chatter and just look at the working part
I got the WiFi Card AX181 Plus on the 21-03-2022 But at first i didnt have time to look at it.
When i eventually got down to look at it. I unpackaget it and put it in the PC i wanted for my BackUp server. Please note that this PC is still located at my own home since i got no way to route Internet down into my parent's basement.
At a first i noticed a WiFi device from the
iwconfigcommand calledwlp4s0I decided that i wouldten try to connect it to the internet without the 5.17 kernel. Since i didn't see any reason to try it out before i got a kernel that could run it proberly.So at first i tried to install the kernel, but wasnt documenting it at the first because i didn't think it was nessecary.
Later i tried to retract my steps and document the past and the present process. So i might have missed some steps or info in the progress.
I first followed the part from
How to Install the Latest Mainline Linux Kernel Version in Ubuntu [GUI and Terminal Methods]
About during it in commandline
I downloaded the four described kernel headers, image and modules
Then proceeded with
dpkg install *.debIt failed with dependency missing for kernel headers, and lead to an unbootable system
I then followed the uninstall of the kernel 5.17
Proceeded to install ukuu, the GUI way to install an ubuntu kernel.
But it only allowed up to kernel 5.7 since its end of life and cost's money for the newer version
I found a ppa for an Ubuntu kernel installer, that is a fork of "ukuu" called "mainline"
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:cappelikan/ppaBut the first attempt failed because i have an nvidia gtx 645, and the proprietary nvidia driver does not support kernel 5.17 "yet".
So again i was left with an unbootable system and had to remove kernel 5.17
I then decided that it was worth an attempt to use the opensource nouveau driver So i used the ubuntu "Software & Updates" to revert to the nouveau driver.
Reboot and then follow up on the "mainline" app and install 5.17
This time i was met with a dependency issue again for kernel headers that it needed
libssl3i took the chance and rebooted, got in on kernel 5.17
But now i funny enough had a problem that my browser Brave (Chromium based) and firefox ESR, froze the entire system every time i tried to open it
I figured it was because of the missing nvidia driver, and some problem with the nvidia nouveau driver.
At the same time the "AX181 Plus" allso frooze the entire system upon attempting to connect to my Router.
I rebooted went back to 5.13 removed kernel 5.17 and proceeded to install the missing dependencies for the 5.17 kernel headers. Figuring this was the culbrit for it all.
I found a page on stackexchange explaining how to install libssl3 and its dependencies
How to use 5.16 kernel with Ubuntu 21.10?
So after the install i went through the logs and found that (believe it or not it continues) that dkms doesnt support the kernel :D So a lot of dkms errors popped up
I probably should not have reboot at this time but took the chance and rebooted again but this time the initramfs was not available and i was met with an unbootable system again.
Booting back in kernel 5.13 i learned i couldten remove, install or make any changes to the system in any way because of how i installed the
libssl3and its dependenciesSo this time i felt i was left with no other choice than revert my changes because of the install of
libssl3and its dependencies, that had left me with to many added and removed changes to the system.Luckely enough i am on BTRFS with TimeShift installed. So i reverted back to the snapshot i made before i started messing around.
With the system up and running again, and the knowledge that all dependecies for kernel 5.17 and
libssl3etc. is in Ubuntu 22.04I decided that i'm gonna wait to try and install kernel 5.17 again until 22.04 LTS is official released and give it a go then.
The last attempt
Now comes the best part, i decided heck i cant make this much worse just by trying out the "wlp4s0" on kernel 5.13. And during my many reboots i had noticed in dmesg that kmod mt7921e was loaded on kernel 5.13.
So i connected to the 5 Ghz network on my home router, Got a connection speed from "iwconfig" of "780mbps"
Ran the speedtest.net cli tool and got
So until now i suppose this is what i got.
It's not the worst start to actually get a connection on kernel 5.13. And to get a speed of 371 down on an unsupported kernel wasnt the worst scenario either. But please note the PC is located 2 meters unopstructed from the routher atm. This wont be the same scenario at my parents place since it will be a floor of wood and a brick wall in between.
I am now waiting eagerly for Ubuntu 22.04 to be released. Then i will upgrade to 22.04 and make sure to make a BTRFS snapshot.
And proceed with the kernel 5.17 install.
I just have to check if it is possible for me to get a better connection and/or speed with kernel 5.17 than on 5.13. Especially since it loaded "mt7921e" and not "mt7921k" in kernel 5.13.
Best regards, Darkyere