Setup Wifi on Beaglebone Black Wireless

[tdlivings]

I received my BB Black Wireless yesterday and I do not see any doc on how to set up

wireless for my home network.

USB 192.168.7.2 network works and Cloud9 there gets a terminal.

I tried my usual editing of /etc/network/interfaces with my said and psk for wlan0 but it did not connect.

I found a thread on Beagelbone Black section with something to try

nah use connman, i have it installed by default on jessie images. ;) 

~$ sudo connmanctl 

connmanctl> enable wifi 

Enabled wifi 

connmanctl> scan wifi 

Scan completed for wifi 

connmanctl> services 

*AO Wired                ethernet_74d435b65be6_cable 

    Avenger              wifi_14cc201db6f6_4176656e676572_managed_psk 

connmanctl> agent on 

Agent registered 

connmanctl> connect wifi_14cc201db6f6_4176656e676572_managed_psk 

Agent RequestInput wifi_14cc201db6f6_4176656e676572_managed_psk 

  Passphrase = [ Type=psk, Requirement=mandatory ] 

Passphrase? wine n dine 

Connected wifi_14cc201db6f6_4176656e676572_managed_psk 

connmanctl> quit 

check: 

sudo ifconfig -a 

Regards, 

-- 

Robert Nelson 

However it did not work as scan wifi just returned and did not say scan completed

tried command services anyway and it just returned

entered help and saw a tether command with wifi said and psk entry and trie it with

my network said and ask and now the Access point network of the Beaglebone Black

wireless has the name of my home network. Just as a test I did it again and changed the

name to something else and that became the name so obviously that is not the way.

What is the planned method.

Thank's

Tom

[Robert Nelson]

On Tue, Dec 6, 2016 at 9:05 PM, tdlivings <tdli...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I received my BB Black Wireless yesterday and I do not see any doc on how to
> set up
> wireless for my home network.
> USB 192.168.7.2 network works and Cloud9 there gets a terminal.
>
> I tried my usual editing of /etc/network/interfaces with my said and psk for
> wlan0 but it did not connect.
>
> I found a thread on Beagelbone Black section with something to try

Reflash with this image:

https://rcn-ee.net/rootfs/bb.org/testing/2016-12-05/lxqt-4gb/

In the version you have, I had setup the wl18xx in tether mode,
however this doesn't work the greatest when no eth0 device is
available..

In 2016-12-05, the wl18xx is setup by default as an access point,
which you can ssh into, and then use connmanctl to connect to a real
AP. (while still being connected to it's AP over ssh)..

If you plug in a usb-eth adapter, it'll default back to the previous
tether mode.

(this change in 2016-12-05, is for bbbw users to hopefully give a
better wifi out of box experience)..

Regards,

--
Robert Nelson
https://rcn-ee.com/

[tdlivings]

OK IT WORKS NOW

I attached a terminal dump from cloud9 showing what steps I took as

well as a Mac Terminal after Rebooting.

One question is in /etc/network/interfaces there is a comment 

##connman: WiFi

#

#connmanctl

#connmanctl> tether wifi disable

#connmanctl> enable wifi

#connmanctl> scan wifi

#connmanctl> services

#connmanctl> agent on

#connmanctl> connect wifi_*_managed_psk

#connmanctl> quit

I did not do the tether wifi disable but instead followed your instructions from the thread I referred to here.

Should I have done that and if so can I just do it by itself now.

Also when I try and do the connmanctl commands from a Mac Terminal instead of Cloud9 I get the following error

root@beaglebone:~# sudo connmanctl

Error getting VPN connections: The name net.connman.vpn was not provided by any

 connmanctl> quit

Hope the info helps

Tom

[Robert Nelson]

On Wed, Dec 7, 2016 at 2:46 PM, tdlivings <tdli...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>
> OK IT WORKS NOW
>
> I attached a terminal dump from cloud9 showing what steps I took as
> well as a Mac Terminal after Rebooting.
>
> One question is in /etc/network/interfaces there is a comment
>
> ##connman: WiFi
> #
> #connmanctl
> #connmanctl> tether wifi disable
> #connmanctl> enable wifi
> #connmanctl> scan wifi
> #connmanctl> services
> #connmanctl> agent on
> #connmanctl> connect wifi_*_managed_psk
> #connmanctl> quit
>
>
> I did not do the tether wifi disable but instead followed your instructions
> from the thread I referred to here.
> Should I have done that and if so can I just do it by itself now.

So, "tether wifi disable" is needed when connman is in control of the
tether'ing. (<tether> interface shown by sudo ifconfig -a)

With 2016-12-05 and future images, /usr/bin/bb-wl18xx-tether is
controlling it. (<SoftAp0> interface shown by sudo ifconfig -a)

Main differences:

connman tether <tether> : Allows one AP connection, nice for making a
router (when you have a usb-ethernet interface)

/usr/bin/bb-wl18xx-tether <SoftAp0> : Allows one AP and a second WiFi Connection

btw, one issue with this new setup, WiFi is slower with the dual
connections, in my testing switching from v4.4.x -> v4.9.x saw an
increase from 55kb/s -> 1,600kb/s

$ cd /opt/scripts/tools/
$ git pull
$ sudo ./update_kernel.sh --ti-kernel --lts-4_9

[Mark Copper]

btw, one issue with this new setup, WiFi is slower with the dual
connections, in my testing switching from v4.4.x -> v4.9.x saw an
increase from 55kb/s -> 1,600kb/s

$ cd /opt/scripts/tools/
$ git pull
$ sudo ./update_kernel.sh --ti-kernel --lts-4_9

Did I bonk my BBB by updating my kernel with this recipe 6 months later?

The device boots up but messages of "direct firmware load for am335x-pru0-fw failed with error -2" are written to console. "ifconfig" freezes the command line and can no longer ssh in via wlan0.

I'll look into it more carefully later.  BBB and bonehead error.

#uname -a
Linux beaglebone 4.9.25-ti-r32 #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri May 5 19:10:28 UTC 2017 armv7l GNU/Linux

Thanks.

[Robert Nelson]

On Mon, May 8, 2017 at 7:17 PM, Mark Copper <mlco...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> btw, one issue with this new setup, WiFi is slower with the dual
>> connections, in my testing switching from v4.4.x -> v4.9.x saw an
>> increase from 55kb/s -> 1,600kb/s
>>
>> $ cd /opt/scripts/tools/
>> $ git pull
>> $ sudo ./update_kernel.sh --ti-kernel --lts-4_9
>>
> Did I bonk my BBB by updating my kernel with this recipe 6 months later?

It "shouldn't" right now as the only developers behind "--ti-kernel
--lts-4_9" is ti.com, at this point i'm just rebasing to keep the same
setup..

>
> The device boots up but messages of "direct firmware load for am335x-pru0-fw
> failed with error -2" are written to console.

This is normal, and ported from teh --lts-4_4 branch by ti.com, it's
the pru interface. You as the end user have the abilty to load two pru
firmwares and run what ever you want on the pru.

> "ifconfig" freezes the command
> line and can no longer ssh in via wlan0.

AH this is odd.. I'll look into this tomorrow..

>
> I'll look into it more carefully later. BBB and bonehead error.
>
> #uname -a
> Linux beaglebone 4.9.25-ti-r32 #1 SMP PREEMPT Fri May 5 19:10:28 UTC 2017
> armv7l GNU/Linux

[Mark Copper]

A little more data in case useful.

By isolating ifconfig in a separate screen window, it appears that ifconfig process starts but does not return and is not using any CPU. Similarly for "ip link show" and "ip a".

root@beaglebone:~# cat /proc/net/dev
Inter-|   Receive                                                |  Transmit
 face |bytes    packets errs drop fifo frame compressed multicast|bytes    packets errs drop fifo colls carrier compressed
  usb0:       0       0    0    0    0     0          0         0        0       0    0    0    0     0       0          0
 wlan0:       0       0    0    0    0     0          0         0        0       0    0    0    0     0       0          0
  usb1:       0       0    0    0    0     0          0         0        0       0    0    0    0     0       0          0
    lo:   25280     320    0    0    0     0          0         0    25280     320    0    0    0     0       0          0

The commands "service networking stop/start" do return after timing out and leaving systemd messages like this:

May  9 00:46:05 beaglebone systemd[1]: Starting Raise network interfaces...
May  9 00:51:05 beaglebone systemd[1]: networking.service: Start operation timed out. Terminating.
May  9 00:51:05 beaglebone systemd[1]: Failed to start Raise network interfaces.
May  9 00:51:05 beaglebone systemd[1]: networking.service: Unit entered failed state.
May  9 00:51:05 beaglebone systemd[1]: networking.service: Failed with result 'timeout'.

Finally, there is this message in syslog:

May  8 23:33:43 beaglebone systemd-udevd[566]: seq 2224 '/devices/platform/ocp/47810000.mmc/mmc_host/mmc2/mmc2:0001/mmc2:0001:2/wl18xx.1.auto/net/wlan0' killed