Losing Network - What log files

FlightAware ADS-B Flight Tracking
1

Folks,

Had PiAware running reliably for around 6+ months on a Zero with wifi. As a safeguard a small script runs every 5 minutes, checks connection and, if down, reconnects.

Last couple of days suffered disconnects with no reconnection - as it is headless difficult to narrow down but syslog file suggests system still running.

Switched card to different Pi, connected fine on different IP, aircraft map showed activity then dropped.

Any suggestions as to what log file to check to see what problem might be?

Appreciate any comments,

Geffers

2

Wifi logs are in dmesg but this might not be a problem with the zero.

Did you have problems with other networked devices or the router?

3

My dmesg file is empty.

I didn’t knowingly have problems with any other devices.

Just suffered another loss of signal, only way I can resolve is switch off and on but checking the syslog I’ve got the following around 40 times;

Jan 8 18:37:32 zero dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 10.19.44.21 port 67
Jan 8 18:37:49 zero dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 10.19.44.21 port 67
Jan 8 18:37:59 zero dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 10.19.44.21 port 67
Jan 8 18:38:07 zero dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 10.19.44.21 port 67
Jan 8 18:38:15 zero dhclient: DHCPREQUEST on wlan0 to 10.19.44.21 port 67

Obviously I was unaware of this at the time.

Geffers

4

You can see the signal quality to the router is with command

sudo iwlist wlan0 scan

I have noticed that some Raspberry Pi 3 internal wifi antenna will have marginal signals in one location but a different location about 3-5 feet away will be good.

Also, try to point the Raspberry pi wifi antenna in the direction of the access point. It is the white rectangle thingy between the DISPLAY connector and the corner mounting hole.

1 Like
5

I’ve created a script file that runs every five minutes and saves a log file in my home directory.

It prints the time, Signal strength, quality and ESSID.

If it goes down now I’ll at least know if the wifi is just losing connection or the system is failing.

I already had a script running which was recommended to me, it checks the wifi with ping every 5 minutes and if no connection attempts another connection.

That is why it is strange getting all those numerous DHCP requests.

I do use iwlist scan and my signal is generally fine.

I’ll let you know how I get on.

Geffers