How to install a TP-Link TL WN821N USB Wireless N Dongle in Ubuntu 10.10

I’m disappointed that this doesn’t work out of the box, as I’m sure I consulted several Ubuntu lists which implied it would.

Anyway….

After MUCH searching, and several false starts:

I downloaded the drivers from wireless.kernel.org by downloading the latest .tar file from

http://wireless.kernel.org/download/compat-wireless-2.6

I untarred it.

Then opened up a terminal and entered

cd Downloads

cd compat-wireless-*

./scripts/driver-select ar9170

make

sudo make install

sudo make wlunload

modules=”cfg80211 mac80211 ar9170usb”

for i in $modules; do sudo modprobe $i; done

Hopefully this should have successfully loaded the drivers. Now we need the firmware

I downloaded this from:

http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/mcgrof/firmware/ar9170/ar9170.fw

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/dwmw2/linux-firmware.git;a=blob_plain;f=ar9170-1.fw;hb=master

http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/dwmw2/linux-firmware.git;a=blob_plain;f=ar9170-2.fw;hb=master

There seem to be three versions, and I wasn’t sure which one to use, so I got them all!

Then I moved them into the ubuntu /lib/firmware directory

sudo mv ~/Downloads/ar9170.fw /lib/firmware

sudo mv ~/Downloads/ar9170-1.fw /lib/firmware

sudo mv ~/Downloads/ar9170-2.fw /lib/firmware

Reboot the PC, and you should have wireless!