Wifi error log for Bookworm?

I sympathise. The main problem is not that its different and the defaults may well have changed, its that the body of knowledge and online documentation has not caught up.

Having finally plumbed the depths of network manager, it's not bad, and it does offer command line, Curses based and x-window based interfaces to it.

Once you know how to mess with it, its quick work to try out various options and see what works.

Its taken about 6 months but my slow progress on bookworm seems to have arrived at a stable headless setup on both pi 4B and Pi Zero Ws.

I have one more issue on the 4B but its not interesting to talk about here.

I will stick with bookworm and persevere to make it work. I am fortunately in no hurry.

Eventually one has to know how to use systemd and network manager, and that is the price to pay for using a vanilla bookworm.

It should be possible to have an old-style serial console, too.

If it was in range of an Ethernet switch, I wouldn't be using WiFi!

---druck

Yes, I'm sure I could drag a monitor and keyboard up to the attic, or down to the shed. However, it's easier in most situations to bring the Pi back to the monitor and keyboard to sort it out.

But the point is; with the previous DHCPCD/WPAsuplicant the selection of the WiFi network was immutable. With the hardware watchdog set to reboot on crashes, if you couldn't connect to the Pi it was more likely the AP wasn't working.

However, when using Network Manager, it sometimes decides to try a different network, leaving a remote headless Pi stuffed. Whilst all my 'desktop/media' Pi's (connected to monitors and keyboards) are on Bookworm, all the headless ones are remaining on Bullseye for the time being.

---druck

You don’t need a switch, at gigabit speeds and above you can just run a point-to-point cable.

I think the answer is, only use Network Manager on personal mobile devices like laptops. Any kind of server-side machine should avoid it and stick to a fixed configuration instead.

I already told you the solution to that.

There is a priority system in network manager.

Otherwise it will connect to whatever it connected to last time, or sometimes not

If you have more than one connection profile use:

sudo nmcli c modify MYCONNECTIONNAME connection.autoconnect-priority 1

Randomly created connections are default priority zero

This is also an accessible parameter from the GUI widget if you have a GUI interface

It will then at least try only that SSID *first*

Or delete any alternative connection profiles.

Oh, and you can confine it to also use only one frequency too.

Except it doesn't actually work all the time. I've set up all my Pi's which have both 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz WiFi with a higher priority to the

Network manager has not yet reached the required level of stability.

---druck

Anything to do with systemd is enviably more pain.

I'm not using systemd-postcardd either

---druck

Then delete the 2,4 GHZ SSID...

That's really not the point is it.

---druck

It is. If you have an SSID registerd with the Pi that is 2.4GHZ its going to sometimes connect to it So remove it from the PI. It then wont know it exists.

Well it will still know it exists; it just won't know the password for it.

Network manager doesn't attempt to connect to SSIDS it has not configuration data for. The code that scans and presents possible SSIDS to connect to is not normally invoked

No it's not. You are recommending the use of Network Manager instead of DHCPCD/WPA_Supplicant for headless Pi's, when it has serious problems which I and others have detailed. Your response is to suggest an increasing number of workarounds, some of which reduce useful functionality.

The reason the 2.4GHz SSID is configured is in case the Pi needs to be relocated to another part of the property where 5 GHz is too weak. This has never been a problem when using DHCPCD/WPA_Supplicant, so I'm not about to remove it in order to use a flaky Network Manager.

The sensible solution is to use the correct tool for the job, rather than whatever happens to be installed by default by Raspbian. This is an advantage of Linux, instead of being stuck with whatever Microsoft mandates you should use in Windows.

---druck

People adopt it by choice, because it solves so many problems that have been bugging *nix systems for years, decades.

Remember, it’s modular, so it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition: you can just adopt the core and whatever modules you think are useful, and ignore the rest.

Well in fact the only problems I have had is in understanding how it works

You never said that. Sigh.

This

If you want to tread a lone path that is your privilege. Don't expect support from those who have chosen to understand the main road.

That's exactly what I am doing here!

---druck