I recently had an RPi where the Wi-Fi wouldn't connect after a power-down reboot. No settings were changed, and I could see DHCP requests going out. Didn't have the time to resolve it, so used Ethernet instead as a connection was to hand. Other RPi cards on the same network have rebooted with power-down multiple times without problems.
However, I've just had a second RPi with the same problem (and same solution). No configuration change, but no Wi-Fi connection. These RPi are both model 1B.
One other change has been adding a second access point (2 GHz) with the same SSID. I've read that this is OK and the device will simply pick the strongest signal and connect to it. Certainly the 5 GHz devices such an a iPad, RapPi-4B and Pixel 3 phone. don't seem to be affected (different SSID). I'm using a separate router connected to my wired LAN, and the two access points are connected to that LAN. No combined ISP modem/router/Wi-Fi box involved
Should be /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf, right? Which I remembered as having 600 permissions, which it really should have because it contains wifi passwords, hashed or even clear text, but right now when I checked it was 644! I really can't imagine that that was always the case. Rather disturbing that there was a "secret" update along the way, if it was that.
(Of course, the standard setting of Raspbian is to not require a sudo password anyway...)
Can be customised by assigning "priority=" directives where higher = earlier. Although apparently that gets ignored when using "scan_ssid=1" (for that network, or for all, I don't know) which you would use to forcibly scan for a network with hidden SSID, but I don't have that. Also I just reorder the entries instead of using priority.
I always forget, I maybe never quite figured out, how one would manually associate the Pi with a particular network configured in wpa_supplicant.conf from the command line, which I sometimes want when for whatever reason the Pi didn't pick up, or lost, the main network at some point.
The SSIDs are a blind alley IMHO. Multiple AP networks seem to have some mystery about them in the hobbyist community where they're regarded as esoteric, but these things are designed for enterprise deployment - AP selection and indeed handover were baked into the spec on day one and essentially work automatically. I'd look a bit deeper into the network configuration.
How are the two routers connected? For a single, seamless network you would generally want to connect them LAN port to LAN port with ethernet. With consumer level gear if you want another configuration
- e.g the second router as repeater - you're probably best with an actual AP as opposed to a second router since they are generally slightly more flexible in their bridging options.
What does the new router's IP setup look like? I suggest a static IP assignment clear to any DHCP pool but with the same network address and and match. Obviously the IP assigned needs to differ from the first router. Default route should be the first router assuming that is where internet connectivity comes from, but shouldn't be too important since you're essentially using it as a layer 2 device - that is it's knowledge of IP should be basically dormant.
In terms of DHCP the simplest way is simply to disable it on the second router in which case the first will supply addresses to both APs (assuming that it was supplying the addresses in the first instance). A simple form of fault tolerance can be provided by adjusting both routers to supply from non-overlapping pools in the same subnet, e.g. 192.168.0.64/27 for the first and 192.168.0.96/27 for the second, assuming a 192.168.0.0 base address. That way leases are still assigned if either router is powered down or hung. I'd only play with that after the network is working, though.
Finally, just one clarification, can you explicitly confirm the Pi is not getting a lease of any form over DHCP, not that it is getting one that does not provide connectivity?
I have three WAPS here. I started out giving them the same SSID/password. My laptop and my mobile phone would both resolutely hold on to the one they initially connected to long past the time when the damned things speed had dropped to unusable.
Now they all have different SSIDs so I can force the devices to use the nearest one ...
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Climate is what you expect but weather is what you get.
Mark Twain
Unless of course you use enterprise grade equipment, when they do.
Yep I had that right up until I ditched the consumer grade APs and installed low-end enterprise grade ones, everything I've tried just roams automatically and sensibly between the two of them even though they are overkill and either alone can give fair coverage in the worst spots. They're also designed for hundreds of parallel connections so the dozen or so devices round here at peak don't phase them at all.
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Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays
C:\>WIN | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see
You lose and Bill collects. | http://www.sohara.org/
So tell me how do professional garde waps manage to make the clients behave differently?
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?It is not the truth of Marxism that explains the willingness of
intellectuals to believe it, but the power that it confers on
intellectuals, in their attempts to control the world. And since...it is
futile to reason someone out of a thing that he was not reasoned into,
we can conclude that Marxism owes its remarkable power to survive every
criticism to the fact that it is not a truth-directed but a
power-directed system of thought.?
Sir Roger Scruton
They have a central controller that looks at all the APs, and all their clients, if it wants a certain client that is using AP1 to switch to AP2, it will tell AP1 to disassociate it, and to refuse re-association, the client will then try to connect to AP2 ...
-- Steve O'Hara-Smith | Directable Mirror Arrays C:\>WIN | A better way to focus the sun The computer obeys and wins. | licences available see You lose and Bill collects. |
========================= Fixed - turned off the 2nd 2G network and the two RPi cards reconnected to Wi-Fi. They were both model 1B running Wheezy, with Wi-Fi adapters purchased around the same time.
Longer: AP1 was the only AP for a long time, and the only 2 GHz those early RPi cards would have known. I bought AP2 as a backup and because I wanted to provide better 5 GHz overall coverage. AP2 was in the more central location, so I left AP2 running on 5 GHz and disabled the 2 GHz on AP1. Some of the cards needed a reboot, or the Wi-Fi USB unplugged and restored. It wasn't all quite as smooth as I have hoped.
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