WiFi not working with Raspberry Pi / Occidentalis

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benjaminh
 
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WiFi not working with Raspberry Pi / Occidentalis

Post by benjaminh »

Evening all,

I've having the same problem. Edimax EW-7811Un with the RTL8188CUS chipset. Same symptoms as the original poster...

thanks much,
ben

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adafruit_support_rick
 
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Re: WiFi not working with Raspberry Pi / Occidentalis

Post by adafruit_support_rick »

Are you using a hidden SSID, like the original poster was? It will only connect to a router if SSID broadcast is enabled.

If you're not doing so already, try running the adapter through a powered hub. The Pi really can't supply enough juice to support a wifi dongle, especially if you've got other things plugged into USB.

Are you getting any error messages related to wifi on the console output when the PI boots?

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benjaminh
 
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Re: WiFi not working with Raspberry Pi / Occidentalis

Post by benjaminh »

Good evening!

Thanks for the reply! No - I am broadcasting my SSID - I have some other wireless devices in the house that don't like a hidden SSID either. I have tried various configurations re: power:

1) wireless and RPi powered from the same powered USB hub
2) wireless in the hub, RPi powered by Adafruit 1A adapter
3) wireless connected direct to the RPi, RPi powered thru the hub
4) wireless connected direct to the RPi, RPi powered by Adafruit 1A adapter

Did not make any difference how things were powered - same results. At the moment, I don't have the error messages I was getting at the boot, but I am going to capture those again shortly.

I've tried some other things:

* made very sure I had edited the right file and got my SSID and WPA2 key right
* verified the MD5sum of both the zip and the image - they are good
* tried different SD Cards, including one bought from Adafruit (4GB), a Transcend 16GB, and a Transcend 4GB - no difference
* the hardware seems okay, on Wheezy everything works flawlessly
* I did put the router into WPA mode to see if this was a router issue, no change

Probably one of the most interesting things - the wired ethernet port doesn't work either under Occidentalis 0.2. As I was turning off the lights on my tomato seedlings, it occurred to me that perhaps this is to ensure compatibility with the RPi's without wired Ethernet?

Some other data points...

lsusb shows "Bus 001 Device 007: ID 7392:7811 Edimax Technology Co., EW-7811Un 802.11n Wireless Adapter [RealTek RTL8188CUS]" so that's a good sign...

lsmod does NOT show any 8192cu or any other devices that might be the wireless. They are all i2c, a whole bunch of snd, spidev, evdev, joydev, spi_bcm2708, rpi_pwm, i2c_bcm.

Interesting, following some other online documentation this seems to suggest that the kernel driver is not loaded.

iwconfig shows: (leaving out lo and eth0)

wlan0 unassociated Nickname:"<WIFI@REALTEK>"
Mode:Managed Frequency=2.412 GHz Access Point: Not-Associated
Sensitivity:0/0
Retry:off RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality:0 Signal level:0 Noise level:0
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
TX excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

dmesg shows a ton of errors... :(

I have probably several hundred of the following group of messages:
ERROR::dwc_otg_hcd_urb_enqueue:518: DWC OTG HCD URB Enqueue failed adding QTD. Error status -4008
INFO:: periodic_channel_available: Total channels: 8, Periodic 7 Non-periodic 0
INFO:: schedule_periodic: No host channel available for periodic transfer.

Interestingly, another different webpage talking about this same adapter shows a very different USB ID. Mine shows 7392:7811, another tutorial shows the same USB dongle showing USBID 0bda:8176.

0bda:8176 has four entries in the RPi_VerifiedPeripherals list, while the 7392:7811 entry has only two, which seems to suggest while there may be several adapters calling themselves EW-7811Un, perhaps there was a change in the internal guts at one time or another?

I did just put in an order for an Adafruit wireless adapter, just in case something has gone different with the Edimax where it no longer works now.

thanks much!
-ben

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: WiFi not working with Raspberry Pi / Occidentalis

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Dang man.. you realize that you just skipped to about page 23 in the "have you tried turning it off and then on again?" checklist, don't you? ;-)

To paraphrase an old saying though, "if dmesg ain't happy, ain't nobody happy." Those are the kinds of errors you get when the hardware you've plugged in is a near-miss to what the kernel driver expects.

The 'bcm' SPI and I2C drivers may have some relation to your device.. 'bcm' usually expands to 'Broadcom', which is a common and notoriously hard to work with WiFi chipset. The drivers for Linux exist, but are closed-source, proprietary, and infuriatingly similar for multiple chipsets while still not actually working unless you get exactly the right combination.


==== EDIT ====

It just registered that you posted the chipset as a Realtek device. They do seem to offer Linux support: http://www.realtek.com.tw/downloads/dow ... loads=true

but you may have to run the variants when it comes to finding a driver that works for the kernel in question.

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benjaminh
 
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Re: WiFi not working with Raspberry Pi / Occidentalis

Post by benjaminh »

I've been known to jump ahead to page 23 quite a bit! I'm one of those folks who have a problem and it eats at them until they solve it. I had done some minor troubleshooting before my post but got much deeper into it after that. ;)

I like that saying - "if dmesg ain't happy, ain't nobody happy!" I was thinking that the bcm statements were broadcom, but were for devices already present on the RPi rather than the dongle. I'm going to test that theory shortly - I'll start Occidentalis with no peripherals other than the keyboard (which is wired) and see what happens. :)

I'm also one of those guys who will try anything.

thanks much!
-ben

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benjaminh
 
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Re: WiFi not working with Raspberry Pi / Occidentalis

Post by benjaminh »

Good afternoon all,

So I did some more troubleshooting - and found out something very, very interesting. I think I have a hub problem. I unplugged everything from RPi and put the keyboard (wired) into the bottom USB and the Edimax into the top one. And it's working - it sees my network, and my router sees it and reports a good connection. The suspect hub is a D-Link DUB-H7 7-Port USB powered Hub. What's funny is that it is both listed in both the working USB hub section and the problem USB hub section, with, drull roll please, the comment "It kills ethernet when X11 is started."

And perhaps this makes sense - this hub works just fine under Wheezy with the Edimax adapter but does not work under Occidentalis v0.2.

So I tried another hub, an old D-Link DUB-H4 that used to give me problems on my XP machine all the time. It didn't work, but I really wasn't all that surprised... I did just order a new hub, a Plugable USB2-HUB-AG7 that seemed highly recommended in the peripherals list. I also plan to borrow a Tripp-Lite hub from a friend at work on Monday. We'll see if either of these help.

I will report back!

thanks much,
ben

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Re: WiFi not working with Raspberry Pi / Occidentalis

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Wow.. that's obscure.

Just to confirm the obvious, you were powering the hub from its wall-wart, yes? That comment about killing the network when X11 starts is hilarious, but sounds like there may be some kind of power issue. X startup is pretty CPU-intensive, which would spike the CPU's power consumption, and it does seem that managing current on the RasPi is a bit of a balancing act.

I'm glad to hear that you got the thing working though.. that's the important thing.

For digging into details in a way that separates the geeks from the normal humans, I've just bought you a 'Reverse Engineering' skill badge. Send a note to [email protected] with a link to this thread and they'll send it to you.

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benjaminh
 
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Re: WiFi not working with Raspberry Pi / Occidentalis

Post by benjaminh »

Wow, thanks! I didn't even know there was such a thing. That really made my day!

Thanks much,
ben

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benjaminh
 
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Re: WiFi not working with Raspberry Pi / Occidentalis

Post by benjaminh »

Good evening all!

I have good news to report - I have solved my Occidentalis wireless problem. Actually, it turned out to be two problems!

Problem #1: the D-Link DUB-H7 7-Port USB powered hub and Occidentalis do not get along.
Problem #2: the Logitech M525 wireless mouse and Occidentalis do not get along either.

I proved this to myself by doing the following. I received my new Plugable USB 2.0 7-port hub that was listed in the RPi peripherals list with a positive review. Plugged in my wireless mouse dongle (Logitech M525) and the Edimax, with the keyboard direct to the RPi and got bizarre symptoms. About 1 boot in 5, it would make a good wireless connection and seem to act normally. The other four boots resulted in no wireless connection. It was almost like there was a race condition - once in a while the Edimax would win, the other four times, something else would lock up the Edimax.

At this point, I remembered something. When I bought the M525 Logitech wireless mouse, it was not on the peripherals list - but one very close in number was, so I decided to give it a shot. This was a mistake.

So I removed the wireless mouse and plugged in a Microsoft wired USB mouse. The setup is now: Plugable 7-port hub, wired keyboard direct to the RPi, and the mouse and Edimax in the Plugable hub. Totally flawless - wireless every time!

At this point, I wondered - was the mouse the problem all along and the hub was working fine? So I powered down, and plugged the Microsoft wired mouse and the Edimax back into the D-Link DUB-H7. This time, instead of working about 1 boot in 5, it never worked! I gave up trying after ten boots/reboots - cold or "sudo reboot" didn't matter.

What I don't understand is this - under Raspbian Wheezy, the H7 hub and the M525 work just fine. Occidentalis is based on Wheezy if I remember correctly - so I would think everything under Wheezy should work under Occidentalis?

When I get time, I am going to sit down and examine how things are loaded in Occidentalis versus Wheezy. I wonder if there is something different between the two?

Anyways, thanks much for the help folks!

-ben

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Re: WiFi not working with Raspberry Pi / Occidentalis

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

Occidentalis is based on an older version of Wheezy, so a newer version of Wheezy might have more/better/newer drivers built in.

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