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bananapi and realtek hostapd problem

AlterX

By AlterX
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AlterX

AlterX

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Hi,

I just migrated to armbian freom bananian using exactly the same hardware components (that were working well with bananian) and now after let armbian auto configure the wifi AP with armbian-config, I can see many problems in starting hostad:

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Can someone give me a hint?

 

Thanks

Gio

Igor

Igor

Posted
Posted
  On 6/14/2018 at 2:01 PM, Gianni Romano said:

I just migrated to armbian freom bananian using exactly the same hardware components

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And why do you hide information about your hardware and ask for help? Provide full logs with: armbianmonitor  -u and hope that someone will see what is the problem.  Bananian had two kernels, Armbian has three ... 

 

Edit: i havent notice before. Armbian-config way of setting AP sometimes doesn't succedd. In that case you are on your own. Like you were on Bananian. Manual way ...

AlterX

AlterX

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I am sorry, but I don't know really the system. This is the output: armbianmonitor -u

 

I have recompiled the latest hostapd 2.6 and applied the realtek patch; the result is the same.

dnsmasq is working well.

What I have noted is: 

wlxe8de279f1eae: flags=4099<UP,BROADCAST,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500
        inet 172.24.1.1  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 172.24.1.255
        ether e8:de:27:9f:1e:ae  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)
        RX packets 1  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 6  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

As you can see the wifi device is UP but not RUNNING and I don't know how to fix this...on bananian it was "easy" nevertheless I performed everything on my own.

Igor

Igor

Posted
Posted
  On 6/14/2018 at 7:49 PM, Gianni Romano said:

I am sorry, but I don't know really the system. This is the output: armbianmonitor -u

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The link is invalid. Most likely you only need to add wireless interface name to the Network manager exceptions and restart it. Check and add here: /etc/NetworkManager/conf.d/10-ignore-interfaces.conf

Igor

Igor

Posted
Posted
  On 6/14/2018 at 8:27 PM, Gianni Romano said:

I set it in that file unfortunately same result

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Then "Armbian support team" can't help.

 

3rd party hardware and applications have no place in a technical support section. Moved elsewhere. It's not related to our work, but most likely to upstream kernel drivers ... I can only wish you luck with finding better drivers.

AlterX

AlterX

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In my humble understand, after I compiled also the realtek driver and always got the same error, is that the armbian kernel has a a glitch somewhere that is preventing rtl8188eu driver from working well...

This is not a configuration problem on hostapd or other software, it is really something that is preventing the wifi dongle from being loaded correctly.

Igor

Igor

Posted
Posted
  On 6/15/2018 at 11:29 AM, Gianni Romano said:

after I compiled also the realtek driver and always got the same error, is that the armbian kernel has a a glitch

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Most wireless drivers code is of low quality and it needs fixing that it's possible to build, than sometimes you need to fix it that it works ... Have you ever asked why certain drivers are not already a part of the mainstream kernel? Some drivers are. Because the code is good and compilation works. Even there, problems/regression is possible.

 

There are extremely slim options that something is wrong with the kernel. You can switch to the beta repository and try two other kernels. First updated 4.14.y and 4.17.y and see if you get the same results. If none works ... you still can use old kernel (not recommended) or buy a well working and supported wifi dongle ... or dig into this driver issue on your own.

AlterX

AlterX

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  On 6/18/2018 at 3:26 PM, Tido said:

Ciao Gianni,

At the bottom of this website you find some products, just click on it https://www.armbian.com/banana-pi-plus/

 

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Ok thank you so much...

I Will opt for this one although it is a bit too much:

Edimax EW-7811UTC

 

Strange that I cannot make my dongles work since I specifically bought those after searching for linux support...

Igor

Igor

Posted
Posted
  On 6/18/2018 at 6:32 PM, Gianni Romano said:

Strange that I cannot make my dongles work since I specifically bought those after searching for linux support...

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Linux support :unsure: ... all those development boards are sold with "Linux support", while most of them are somewhere from usable, barely usable to not usable at all without extensive development and/or fixing such as we and other specialized groups do.

 

Even those wireless adapters, which we have on the list as tested/supported, needs maintaining which costs us perhaps 30-50h per year. Each, well, not exactly each, kernel upgrade, breaks driver compilation and some code adjustment is needed. Usually, it's minor, but sometimes it can get messy. For example, I found out today, that our 8188EU patch breaks when compiling 4.17.2 / aarch64, this way:
 

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Sure it's fixable, but somebody has to donate his time and fix it. I hope you get a picture now. It's kernel version dependent as well.

AlterX

AlterX

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Hi sure...I had already the picture of this.

I know that steady efforts are always asked when other changes or improvements are coming in. I was just speaking about wifi dongles by the way.

Anyway it might be that those wifi dongles I have are well supported as "standard" use of wifi (as client) and it might be that are not well supported to be APs.

Anyway thanks for the support. I will first test it with a startech.com wifi dongle that seems to use the same realtek chip of Edimax one to see if it is working and how stable it is.

 

Thanks so far

Gianni

AlterX

AlterX

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Ok I have reinstalled armbian and the dongle wifi at this point is UP and RUNNING...I configured the wifi to be AP I can connect thru wifi to the bananapi but no internet connection is available so it is not routing to the eth0 interface...

I checked all, ip_forward is 1, rules in iptables are set and the default gateway is the one of the main router.

AlterX

AlterX

Posted
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Posted
  On 6/19/2018 at 8:26 PM, arox said:

Does your router know it should send to bananapi ?

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What do you mean? Bananapi goes to internet thru eth0 over the main router. The wifi on bananapi is the AP and is not actually  routing from wifi dongle to eth0 and thus to internet (thru the main router)

arox

arox

Posted
Posted

I suppose you have a host B that want to join Internet through A (bananapi) and Router R. In that case, B send packets to A, A forward packet to R, R forward to Internet. But the reverse path should be OK : R send packet to A when Internet reply to B.

 

The normal, basic configuration should be that A

- is configured as router (ip_forward = 1)

- present 2 different neworks on etho and wlan0

- forward traffic by default to R (default route)

 

But B should have default route to A and Router should have a route to B or network of B threw A.

 

But this is just basic configuration, you can also bridge or subnet/proxy or nat or ...

 

If you use bridging, wlxx interface should not have an address but be associated (with eth0) to a bridge (install bridge-utils) and forget about ip_forward or iptables

AlterX

AlterX

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Yes that is done over NAT with iptables so bananapi has a wifi AP that is redirecting or should the traffic towards eth0 that is connected to the main router that provides internet access.

Anyway I used armbian-config to automatically set the wifi AP and it seems to not work well, because after this problem of connectivity now I get problem with dnsmasq: 

systemctl status dnsmasq.service
● dnsmasq.service - dnsmasq - A lightweight DHCP and caching DNS server
   Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/dnsmasq.service; disabled; vendor preset: enabled)
   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Tue 2018-06-19 22:05:19 CEST; 11h ago
  Process: 805 ExecStart=/etc/init.d/dnsmasq systemd-exec (code=exited, status=2)
  Process: 786 ExecStartPre=/usr/sbin/dnsmasq --test (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Jun 19 22:05:19 bananapi systemd[1]: Starting dnsmasq - A lightweight DHCP and caching DNS server...
Jun 19 22:05:19 bananapi dnsmasq[786]: dnsmasq: syntax check OK.
Jun 19 22:05:19 bananapi dnsmasq[805]: dnsmasq: failed to create listening socket for 172.24.1.1: Cannot assign requested address
Jun 19 22:05:19 bananapi systemd[1]: dnsmasq.service: Control process exited, code=exited status=2
Jun 19 22:05:19 bananapi systemd[1]: Failed to start dnsmasq - A lightweight DHCP and caching DNS server.
Jun 19 22:05:19 bananapi systemd[1]: dnsmasq.service: Unit entered failed state.
Jun 19 22:05:19 bananapi systemd[1]: dnsmasq.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

and surprisingly the content of /etc/network/interfaces.d/armbian.ap.nat disappeared

Igor

Igor

Posted
Posted
  On 6/20/2018 at 7:12 AM, Gianni Romano said:

Anyway I used armbian-config to automatically set the wifi AP and it seems to not work well

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This tool is and will probably remain in the beta state unless there will be extensive help with maintaining. It's a complex task to secure that this wizard operate stabile. I know it has many weaknesses ... and I have some ongoing plans on how to expand the tool and make it stronger. But life has other plans :) 

 

  On 6/20/2018 at 7:12 AM, Gianni Romano said:

and surprisingly the content of /etc/network/interfaces.d/armbian.ap.nat disappeared

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If you disable AP with a tool, this is removed. Somehow expected behaviour.

AlterX

AlterX

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Ok so now I am trapped because I have have enbled it again, but file is not there...

Another issue comes: the dongle randomly switch off and is no more available!

 

EDIT: I used again armbian-config to disable the AP (when this voice is popping up!) and I reinstalled the AP again; now it seems everything is working properly and also internet access is valid...

I will now test the stability of the dongle and of the AP

AlterX

AlterX

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So everything seems to work, but...

I can only see the AP from smartphone or laptop but not from a PC either using an external dongle or the integrated one.

 

 

AlterX

AlterX

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Sometimes it get stuck...it happend the first time after 2 weeks and now really often every second day...could it be the warm?

Tido

Tido

Posted
Posted
  On 2/5/2019 at 6:35 AM, dony71 said:

no internet on BPI M2+

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armbianmonitor -u    tells the reader all the details about your Installation, like Kernel-Version and much more

 

Igor

Igor

Posted
Posted

I hope you are using powered USB hub? Move to most recent kernel and try to use wireless without anything connected to the board. Then proceed with adding things ... 

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