Wi-Fi problem

[Achilleas Pappas]

Hello everyone, newbie here just starting with armbian

Recently I bought a cheap orange pi zero and I cannot connect via ssh through wifi. I read multiple threads regarding that issue however I cant say I understood everything I read. So, in a nutshell, is there any solution available? As many users reported, I can connect via ssh over etherner or wifi when ethernet is plugged in but not when only a wifi connection is available. 

[tkaiser]

On 11.3.2017 at 4:20 PM, Achilleas Pappas said:

Recently I bought a cheap orange pi zero and I cannot connect via ssh through wifi

 

That's simply not true. In case you already established a Wi-Fi connection to your AP (using nmtui or nmcli) then simply do the following:

• shut your SBC down
• unplug Ethernet cable from your SBC (this is totally unrelated to OPi Zero, I emphasize on this since a few morons on the net constantly claim OPi Zero would have non working Wi-Fi)
• restart your AP
• power your SBC on

Try SSH over Wi-Fi now and you're in. The whole 'problem' boils down to legacy sun8i kernel behaviour, MAC addresses, ARP tables/caches, routing settings on your AP when you first connect your SBC with both Ethernet and WiFi to the same network (your AP/router is involved here too). As soon as your AP doesn't remember to connect to your WiFi MAC address through the Ethernet interface the problem is solved. So what you're running into is only caused by (temporarely) connecting your SBC with both network interfaces to the same AP/router that is most probably configured as a bridge between wired/wireless using same IP address range.

[Achilleas Pappas]

That's Amazing! It now works!! Thank you very much for the feedback! I cannot believe that such an easy explanation of the problem and a simply solution as that is not spread through the net as everyones tries to explain what is happenning without having any true clue! Anyway, thanks a lot! FIY: Just to be sure, I deleted both entries of my OPI in my AP before restarting it.

[michal]

Hi, I am having the wifi connection trouble even though I did what TKaiser suggested.

My settings - Armbian 5.25 Jessie 3.4.113-sun8i running on Orange Pi Zero.

wpa_supplicant configured:

network={
    ssid="MY_WIFI"
    psk="secret_password"
}

 

interfaces configured:

auto eth0
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp

 

auto wlan0
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet manual
wpa-roam /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
iface default inet dhcp

wireless-mode Managed
wireless-power off

 

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

 

my router: TP-LINK Archer C2.

SSH via Ethernet is OK, but SSH via wifi is complete K.O. I am not even able to get the log in screen, although I do have the IP address for wifi as well as for Eth0. Mentioned nmcli is bugy ->

nmcli d wifi list

brings an empty list, although

nmcli radio wifi -> is enabled.

nmcli d wifi rescan

ends up with Error: Scanning not allowed while unavailable or activating

nmtui is MEGA bugy :-( does not connect to the AP at all...

 

The OPIz and Router restart trick did not bring any effect at all.

Thanks for any advice.

 

Problems resolved, see few posts below

Edited March 12, 2017 by michal
Problems resolved, see few posts below

[tkaiser]

8 minutes ago, michal said:

even though I did what TKaiser suggested

 

Obviously you didn't do what this tkaiser suggested (since he spoke about nmcli and nmtui -- both will only work if you leave /etc/network/interfaces as it is by default: empty). Tkaiser also added a signature to his posts for a reason (read the stuff about logs and so on).

 

Just in case: nmtui will also happily prevent you from connecting to SSIDs that are 'hidden' (and that's a feature not a bug). So in case your AP is set up this way you would have to change 'visibility' first.

[michal]

Hi, I commented out all interfaces file, but I still have got

nmtui:ERROR:nmt-newt-listbox.c:333:update_active_internal: assertion failed: (priv->active >= 0 && priv->active < priv->entries->len)  Aborted

 

as I try to activate the connection.

My AP is visible.

 

Problems resolved, see few posts below

Edited March 12, 2017 by michal
Problems resolved, see few posts below

[tkaiser]

11 minutes ago, michal said:

nmtui:ERROR

 

I had once an nmtui failure but that wasn't with Armbian but with Raspbian Lite instead: 

So without providing logs it's pretty useless to continue. Just to state the obvious: After fiddling around with config files that might interfere with network-manager  behaviour at least this service has to be restarted with systemctl (though in my Raspbian example above that didn't work and I had to issue a 'reboot' to get nmcli doing the job).

 

BTW: I recommend network-manager for a reason: since it avoids some common pitfalls with the traditional network setup in Debian/Ubuntu when there's more than interface (which needs some networking skills to be able to resolve, at least some basic understanding how the OS sets routes up and stuff like this -- with NM and untouched config files it should 'just work', if not then logs are needed since a simple 'nm... is buggy' is obviously both wrong and not sufficient to find any real bugs)

[michal]

Hi, you were right, I needed to reboot the Orange Pi Zero after commenting out the interfaces file to start the nmtui and nmcli. Now, I am able to get the network lists and activate the proper Wifi connection. All mentioned problems, that I reported as bugs are gone. Thanks a lot for priceless advice - I have spent nearly 9 days playing with Wifi settings, before I wrote these lines into forum. The last thing: OPIz is connected via wifi to router, but SSH gives me Network error: Connection timed out. Ethernet works fine, though. Thanks in advance.

[tkaiser]

7 minutes ago, michal said:

All mentioned problems, that I reported as bugs are gone

 

Would be great if you could edit your posts above (just mentioning 'Problems resolved, see few posts below' somewhere or as first line each). Regarding SSH problem: It's still useless without logs and/or debug output. Please see my signature regarding 'armbianmonitor -u' and keep in mind that when you try to establish SSH connection you can use as many '-v' switches to increase verbosity with ssh command (no idea about Windows though)

[michal]

Hi, ambianmonitor -u uploaded my armhwinfo.log onto

http://sprunge.us/TAUI
I hope the verbosity is sufficient since on my laptop I am using Windows Putty terminal. I am going to edit my posts as you suggested. Thanks for your care.

[tkaiser]

Hmm... without a serial console connected I don't think we'll make further progress. The wlan0 interface showed no assigned address most of the times so it's really hard to tell what's going on with Ethernet disconnected when you aren't able to login through Wi-Fi.