I have spent a few nights struggling with UDOO wl networking…
UDOO per se is a very nice beast, its limitations seem essentially due to software problems, AFAIK,
but getting the wireless network to work reasonably is an issue both with Ubuntu and Volumio.
This is especially frustrating, as setting up the wired network is very strightforward, so you get
the impression that the problem is not in what you are doing…
First of all, I have not been able found any way to make everything work using Volumio network panel.
I was able set up the wired network with a static address, I confirmed with the top button, it took a while
and then it worked as expected.
Then I went to the wirelss SSID setup panel (the wireless ip address panel seemed disabled, no address
was shown, neither any active button), inserte the required data, confirmed with the bottom button,
and it remained apparently stuck. But I was connected via wired network: as a matter of fact, instead
it had just reset the wired connection to dhcp, and did not set up the wireless network at all…
After repeating this refrain again and again, finally I decided to go for manual setup. After a lot
of tests, I reached a working configuration, just to see it stop working after any reset or reboot…
After several other troubled hours, I think that I have finally found a definite pattern: setting up a correct
manual configurationis is not enough to make it work.
The situation is weird: everything seems correct, wl is up and (in cas of dhcp) has received an address, and
in some cases the router even lists the UDOO as a wireless client, but still UDOO is not reachable via wireless.
However, if you restart the network deamon, then everything start working correctly (apart a few strange
things I’ll write about later on).
If you now reboot by resetting or powering off (and maybe also via software, I am not sure) the wl does
not work any longer. Again, a restart of the network deamon solves the situation.
In the end, I added the network daemon restart command to the startup script, and now the wl seems to come
up correctly after any reboot.
I append here the files and changes I did hoping to be of some help.
One big caveat: I am still using WEP, even tough this is not safe at all: if you use WPA, things get more
complicated. This in any case affects only the wlan0 section, the rest does not change at all.
-
login as root / volumio
-
reconfigure network: edit file /etc/network/interfaces and make it similar to this:
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet static
address 192.168.1.90
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
wireless-essid TBNet
wireless-key 66666666666666666666666666
address 192.168.1.92
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.1.1
network 192.168.1.0
broadcast 192.168.1.255
- to restart automatically the deamon at the end of reboot, you should edit /etc/rc.local shell file.
However in volumio this file is automatically replaced with a clean version after each reboot: so you
have to edit this clean copy, which is /var/www/_OS_SETTINGS/etc/rc.local
Change it adding the following line just before the exit 0 line:
/etc/init.d/networking restart
For the key, I used the usual key sequence I always use in any wl router or client (the format is the hex
form, for WEP128 26 hex figures).
The strange things: during testing, please take into account that the system has a very strange behaviour
(I had a similar behaviour also with UBUNTU, so I suppose it is related to UDOO hw).
With the configuration file above (and with any other reasonable configuration…) you should get two
different, separated addresses for eth0 and wlan0: the strange fact is that instead
- when wired network is up and wire connected, both addresses are reachable by ping, even though the
wl connection does not work at all.
- when wl is up and running, and the wire is fisically disconnectd, then again both addresses are reachable.
So for any test of the wireless connection, you must fisically disconnect the wired network.
Good luck… and let me know if you find any different behaviour.
Giorgio
@Michelangeloz: just FYI, if you’ll ever find the time to look into it
- at a certain point in test I found in the interfaces file the key inserted by Volumio panel:
if was the string I entered, but encoded in hex (in the example above it would have been 3636363636363636…),
so I assume this might be one of the problems.
- after the weird reset of the configuration experienced while trying to setup wl with the Volumio panel, the
interfaces file was in facts devastated…
just kidding but for me it still manages to get through a few rooms and my hifi is located in the same area as the wifi router so signal range isn’t a concern.