Subj : Re: A bit more on Bookworm and WiFi problens
To   : druck
From : The Natural Philosopher
Date : Wed Nov 13 2024 08:32:37

On 12/11/2024 17:54, druck wrote:
> On 11/11/2024 22:20, bp@www.zefox.net wrote:
>> Apolgies for the mixup. I meant to report that the behavior of
>> the internal wifi seems to be affected by both use of wired ethernet
>> and use of usb wifi. The internal wifi connected spontaneously after
>> connecting either a wired ethernet cable or a usb-wifi dongle. Alas,
>> that behavior is not repeatable. In the present config the usb-wifi
>> dongle connects, I can't get the internal wifi to connect though
>> it does detect the access point.
>
> That does sound like some of the Network Manager behaviour I've
> experienced on a couple of Linux Mint laptops.
>
>> There does seem to be a large discrepancy between wlan0 and wlan1
>> signal strength: wlan1 reports 93-96%, internal wlan0 only 79%.
>> Prior to the recent upgrades (but still bookworm) wlan0 reporting
>> more than about 70% gave a decent connection.
>
> The WiFi antenna on the motherboard is very small, as long as it's a
> normal sized USB WiFi stuck and not one of the tiny nub ones, it's
> antenna will be far bigger.
>
> That's why I used dongles in the shed at the bottom of the garden for
> years with the Pi 1 and then 2, as the signal strength was better than a
> Pi 3 with built in WiFi, although the reliability of the dongles wasn't
> great. Incidentally I'm now using my first Asus router as an Ethernet to
> WiFi bridge, which connects to the house easily over 5GHz with it's
> large triple antenna.
>
>>> Did you start with a fresh Bookworm image?
>> Initialy, yes. It was customized on microSD,
>> moved to a USB hard disk using Raspberry Pi Imager.
>
> So it's a vanilla install using NetWork Manager and not an upgrade from
> Bullseye as I've been doing to retain the old well working DHCPCD and
> WPA supplicant networking.
>
>>> What have you installed since?
>> Nothing apart from supplied upgrades, but I am using wayland, which
>> has been described as troublesome.
>
> It can be, but not usually to networking.
>
>>> What other hardware is connected?
>> One powered hub, running the added usb-wifi dongle
>> (old Ralink RT5370) plus an old Dell keyboard and mouse..
>>
>>> Are you using an official power supply?
>> No, but the Pi5 reads 5.07 volts at the GPIO header.
>>
>> As this saga plays out the USB-Wifi dongle seems to
>> work quite well. Maybe it's all down to the better
>> signal strength. Because the problem appeared shortly
>> after an OS upgrade I tended to blame that. Perhaps
>> I'm mistaken.
>
> Normally on Pi's I'd be looking at a hardware issue to do with the power
> supply and the amount of USB devices connected, but I think you are
> right in this case, and it's Network Manager getting confused about what
> interfaces are available.
>
Or perhaps what priority order  they are to be selected in.

Perhaps its insisting on Ethernet before it brings up wifi etc etc.

> ---druck
>

--
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