Trying to connect raspberry pi 5 mm6108 to AP

Software
1

My raspberry pi5 is loading the drivers dmesg has no errors.

I do have my Halowlink2 AP set up Halow devices will get an ip on this devices local network, which is how I’d like this to work.

kbsherman@pi5:~ $ sudo ip link set wlan1 up
kbsherman@pi5:~ $ sudo iw dev wlan1 scan | grep SSID
SSID: halowlink2-36a7

I had used these steps successfully to connect the station to the AP, but they however no longer work.
sudo ip link set wlan1 up
sudo wpa_supplicant -B -i wlan1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlan1.conf
sudo dhclient wlan1

dhclient wlan1 never returns an ip address

4: wlan1: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state DOWN group default qlen 1000
link/ether 3c:22:7f:71:df:13 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

My AP is set to country code US.

kbsherman@pi5:~ $ sudo iw reg get
global
country US: DFS-FCC
(902 - 904 @ 2), (N/A, 30), (N/A)
(904 - 920 @ 16), (N/A, 30), (N/A)
(920 - 928 @ 8), (N/A, 30), (N/A)
(2400 - 2472 @ 40), (N/A, 30), (N/A)
(5150 - 5250 @ 80), (N/A, 23), (N/A), AUTO-BW
(5250 - 5350 @ 80), (N/A, 24), (0 ms), DFS, AUTO-BW
(5470 - 5730 @ 160), (N/A, 24), (0 ms), DFS
(5730 - 5850 @ 80), (N/A, 30), (N/A), AUTO-BW
(5850 - 5895 @ 40), (N/A, 27), (N/A), NO-OUTDOOR, AUTO-BW, PASSIVE-SCAN
(5925 - 7125 @ 320), (N/A, 12), (N/A), NO-OUTDOOR, PASSIVE-SCAN
(57240 - 71000 @ 2160), (N/A, 40), (N/A)

phy#2 (self-managed)
country US: DFS-invalid
(902 - 904 @ 2), (N/A, 36), (N/A), AUTO-BW
(904 - 912 @ 8), (N/A, 36), (N/A), AUTO-BW
(912 - 920 @ 8), (N/A, 36), (N/A), AUTO-BW
(920 - 928 @ 8), (N/A, 36), (N/A), AUTO-BW
(5650 - 5690 @ 40), (N/A, 36), (N/A), AUTO-BW
(5170 - 5330 @ 160), (N/A, 36), (N/A), AUTO-BW
(5490 - 5650 @ 160), (N/A, 36), (N/A), AUTO-BW
(5735 - 5895 @ 160), (N/A, 36), (N/A), AUTO-BW

phy#0
country 99: DFS-UNSET
(2402 - 2482 @ 40), (6, 20), (N/A)
(2474 - 2494 @ 20), (6, 20), (N/A)
(5140 - 5360 @ 160), (6, 20), (N/A)
(5460 - 5860 @ 160), (6, 20), (N/A)

wpa_supplicant-wlant.conf
country=US
network={
ssid=“halowlink2-36a7”
#psk=“removed for illustration”
psk=441d3497e743c756f6eabf6961b6483a43963e4db89df046215144568ca35694
}

What’s the best way to troubleshoot this?

2

Using nmcli to connect seems to be working

nmcli dev wifi connect “SSID” password “pwd” ifname wlan1

Will keep testing over the next several days.

3

As you’ve discovered, nmcli resolves the issue where direct starting of supplicant does not.

The issue is wlan1: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc noqueue state DOWN , specifically NO-CARRIER.
Someone will definitely correct me, but if I recall correctly, this is because there is an rfkill module on RaspberryPi OS/Ubuntu which keeps the interfaces disabled, network manager handles the enablement of radios through rfkill transparently.

rfkill list all will tell you the state of the radios. Inspect it both before using nmcli, and after using nmcli.

wpa_supplicant might work happily, directly, with rfkill unblock all called before it. Personally I’d just use NetworkManager unless you need a specific feature of wpa_supplicant_s1g.

4

@ajudge I had success for many days connecting to the AP. After returning from vacation, I can no longer connect using nmcli or wpa_supplicant. Perhaps I’ve messed something up in troubleshooting.

I suspect it’s due to the security settings the pi believes the halow sid uses

IN-USE BSSID SSID MODE CHAN RATE SIGNAL BARS SECURITY
94:83:C4:93:36:A9 halowlink2-36a7 Infra 6 130 Mbit/s 77 ▂▄▆_ WPA2

IN-USE BSSID SSID MODE CHAN RATE SIGNAL BARS SECURITY
0C:BF:74:00:47:B0 halowlink2-36a7 Infra 112 135 Mbit/s 69 ▂▄▆_ WEP

The halowlink2 router shows the ssid to use WPA3 - EAP. Is there a way to force the pi to use wpa3?

5

Interesting, this suggests that NetworkManager is performing passive scans as it isn’t getting the full RSN element from the probe request.
Try run
nmcli device wifi rescan and see if that refreshes the scan results.

If that doesn’t work, try force the ssid/connection to wpa3 with

nmcli connection modify <connection-name> 802-11-wireless-security.key-mgmt sae
6

I was able to get connected after modifying the connection.

1 Like
7

@ajudge I’ve been trying to work through another issue Halow Client can't communicate with other devices on the halow ap - #13 by Kenbsherman

and when making halowlink configuration changes I’ve done a factory reset then applied the desired configuration. It’s been here where I’ve been having issued connecting.

The logs from a connection attempt are:

image
image2484×447 69.2 KB

I’ve stopped and started the wpasupplicant service in case there are cashing issues.
The rfkill list shows no blocking

this is what my connection looks like

image
image835×652 11.8 KB

I’m running the morse micro patched linux kernal with morse drivers.

Not sure what to try next.

8

I haven’t had a chance to set up a Raspberry Pi 5 in the same way again. But I’ll add some thoughts into that other thread.

For this immediate issue, some of my old notes I have written down:

From the commandline, I connect like follows.

sudo nmcli d wifi connect <ssid> password <password>`

this will probably fail. with

Error: Connection activation failed: The Wi-Fi network could not be found.

this is something about how nmcli handles protected management frames. The UI version of NetworkManager has seemed to work for me in the past though so there is a difference in behaviour. To make nmcli work, I then needed to run.

sudo nmcli c edit <ssid>
set 802-11-wireless-security.pmf required
set 802-11-wireless-security.psk <password>
save
activate
9

I tried the interactive nmcli and didn’t have any succuss there.

I’ve been ssh’ing into the pi on the my home network primarily for convenience. Just to simplifiy I hooked up my pi to a monitor, killed all wifi connections and tried to connect to the halow network and no luck.

I tried also to connect via wpa_supplicant which had worked one time earlier using sudo wpa_supplicant -B -D nl80211 -i wlan1 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlan1.conf

when I try this I get an error that the driver nl80211 is invalid or something simular.

after a clean reboot, and disconnect from my home wifi I came back and tried an interactive connection and the response in the terminal is error: connection activation failed.

The journal log doesn’t provide imo much more useful info. I’ve included a file with dmesg and the primary issue appears to be
wlan1: authentication with 0c:bf:74:00:47:b0 timed out

dmesgdump.txt (129.5 KB)

10

@ajudge I finally removed the wireless security on the 915mhz radio and was able to connect with sudo nmcli dev wifi connect “halowlink2-36a7” ifname wlan1

reconfigured security, changed the password and on reboots can still successfully connect.

Not sure why it gets stubborn and won’t connect.

11

In my experience using nmcli on the Pi, i have always had to explicitly specify:
set 802-11-wireless-security.pmf required in the nmcli configuration editor.

The gui and nmtui seem to do a fairly good job of detecting this and not requiring it to be manually set.