Doesn’t piaware.txt override wifi settings?
In the Piaware image? If nothing is there… then no.
I lost track, but if Daddy-son is using the FA Piaware SD image, there is no easier way to do the configuration than with the SD card still in the Windows PC, after the burn, but before inserting it in the RPi.
Once in the RPI, and on the network, use sudo piaware-config to make changes.
The FA image is the best and easiest way to start in the hobby. Sending beginners to general Linux, different versions of Raspbian, etc. is a mistake.
An FA Piaware SD image is up and running in 10 minutes, literally. No ifs, ands, and buts, no guessing.
Let them gain some experience, and spend some time here on the forum, before telling them to try other ways and methods. Interest in the hobby will propel them to try other things later.
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Well… it wasn’t up and running.
The receiver is not up and running when the image is being installed. This is one more reason to use the FA Piaware SD image, less variables. We know the image works with the typical hardware most people use. Any problems will likely be elsewhere, network related possibly, but outside of Piaware.
The only possible problems before the image installation are: corrupted image and/or bad SD card.
I’m not including proper formatting and burning of the image on the card.
What do you mean if nothing is there? I don’t use the image but my understanding that for example the wifi name and password in piaware-config.txt that will override settings done with raspi-config as they don’t talk to each other.
Anyway going over the config file i found a possible issue: The sample config file does not have quotation marks around values, that means for example a space in the wifi name will not work.
@obj Would piaware-config.txt work with quotation marks like “My Wifi” as a value?
I mean that a novice doesn’t necessarily know to write things on the SD card files before removing from the PC. He looked at the booted Linux and, at that point, was nothing there to help.
Yes. It’s a bit ugly for backwards-compatibility reasons but the config parser will accept anything matching this regex:
^\s*([a-zA-Z0-9_-]+)\s+(.+)$
then if the first character of the RHS is ' or " then it’ll treat the value as a quoted value with backslash-escaping; otherwise it’ll strip off a trailing comment starting with ‘#’ and any trailing whitespace and use the resulting value. So strictly speaking you only have to quote values that have leading/trailing whitespace that needs to be retained, or that contain #, but quoted values are fine in other cases too.
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No. He got wifi working with the hotspot of his smartphone.
That still requires configuring wifi, so he obviously did.
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¯\(ツ)/¯
…
Thank you everyone. I finally had a free evening to read and study what you all are trying to teach me and my son. I hope you will come back to address my questions and guide our progress.
@obj: I confirmed that piaware-config.txt has the SSID and passphrase exactly as it appears. No funny characters or empty space. Just a combination of lower and capital letters. There are no quotation marks around these since no empty space.
@wiedehopf: I followed your commands. After typing “interface wlan0” this is what I saw.
You can also see at the bottom what happened after typing “cat /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf”
@SoNic67: I tried sudo raspi-config, and re-entered the wifi SSID and passphrase.
@Dxista: I am not exactly following what you are saying with FA image. I used etcher.io to have the piaware program onto the SD card, if that’s what you mean. I simply followed the directions to set this whole thing up without any deviation.
After having done these, I tried to exit and quit the application I was running to see if I can return to the start screen showing the status of the network connection. But I’m stuck at the piaware login screen where I initially arrived with ALF-F2. How do I get out of this prompt asking for login and password to go back to the start screen?
Hi, sorry this is such a lengthy process, debugging wifi in linux is annoying and i need to go step by step myself.
I get the impression there is a problem with wifi and the newest image somehow.
I don’t think you can download old images though.
That being said i’m interested in two more things:
Output of:
cat /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa-roam.conf
And then this time i’d like to the see the scan results. Some of the scans seem to be failing but maybe there are still results:
sudo wpa_cli (enters application command prompt)
interface wlan0
scan (wait a bit)
scan_results
Also did you configure your other computers via WPS or does the router have a custom password set? As i said earlier can you log into your router and check what the passphrase there? Sorry to be pedantic but as the connection with the phone worked i’m not quite sure what might be the problem.
Edit: one more thing you can try:
Add this to piaware-conf.txt
wireless-country US
(easiest way is probably to put the sd-card in another computer and edit piaware-conf.txt there. or on the console you can type: sudo nano /boot/piaware-conf.txt and add the line anywhere you want. then press CTRL-O to save and CTRL-X to exit. then use “sudo reboot” to restart the pi.)
I would just burn again the image. Don’t burn the zip with Etcher directly, un-zip firstly with 7zip and burn the ISO.
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The image works. How can there be write errors or whatever on the sd-card that allow conection to one wifi an not to the other.
If the image does not work i can understand the suggestion. What errors have you fixed by redoing the image if i may ask that you are so quick to suggest it.
Solved my Wifi not working.
Based on what you say… He should do nothing because it works. Or it worked so… no worries.
All I say is that SD cards can get corrupted.
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Not sure if I got what you instructed me to do here…
@SoNic67: I’m hesitant to re-burn the image now only because it’s working now with the ethernet and worked with mobile hotspot wi-fi before. My irrational fear is that if I start over somehow it might not work again. Please feel free to correct my inexperienced and probably incorrect concern
You did everything fine it just means wifi is not working at all now.
Don’t you have a second sd-card (They are quite cheap and i believe 2GB are enough)? That way you can keep the working setup and still try again 
In case you indeed burn another image include “wireless-country US” as a line below the wifi name and password (can’t hurt at least)
Good luck! (Sorry these things are hard to remotely troubleshoot)
Here is a router information. Does this help at all? (I erased the passphrase for the screenshot, but it’s composed of letters and no space or special characters). It just seems odd that none of my electronic devices has a hard time accessing this wi-fi except this rasberry pi
Just making sure you are putting in an actual password not a WPS pin (was very unlikely).
This command would still interest me:
cat /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa-roam.conf
No need to post it just to make sure your wifi details are in it.
Also the output of
sudo rfkill list all
would be interesting
(also if you are fine with just leaving it on the Ethernet no need to waste your time on it)
The Pi3 has only 2.4GHz band, doesn’t see the 5GHz one. But yeah, there is nothing “special” there in your settings. I also turned off in my router the “Push Button Method” because it is known to be insecure.