AP SSID not showing up

[adilberrada]

Hi,

I did follow correctly your tutorial. First time I tried, I could see from my iPhone the rpi SSID in wifi list. Once I added the line "denyinterfaces wlan0", I could not make it work. The script goes well but I can't see the rpi in wifi list... don't know what I did wrong ...

Now my pi has 192.168.44.1 address but it does not show up and I can't get my pi to connect to a wifi. Any idea ?

Thank you very much !

[sabhiram]

Pi3 or Pi2? What OS?

[adilberrada]

Pi3. After a fresh reinstall I got it work but have another bug (#24), once I open the web page after connecting to pi's ip, there is no scan, I only get {{ cell.ssid }} {{

[shawnipoo]

cell.ssid went away after reinstalling. Do not know why I had it too... Thing is that it still does not broadcast!
@sabhiram , what is the ideal OS to install on a Pi3?

[sabhiram]

I think it should just be whatever latest raspbian - but there have been network utility changes that are messing with this tool. Not sure I can reproduce what you are seeing on my Pi3 either...

[shawnipoo]

@sabhiram , what OS do you have it operational on? I do not need the latest version of raspbian, but id really love to get this working. I've literally tried installing it 10 times in many different ways (different order of installing things) to no avail... Would you kindly be able to help out?

[sabhiram]

Dang, maybe we should hop on a hangout / call so I can see your screen and try and walk through things. I think I just used the latest version of raspbian from the raspberry pi website.

I apologize for the lag in delay, we are trying to form a new startup and it has been taking up quite a bit of my time lately.

[shawnipoo]

I'd love that! Maybe this weekend? Let me know when you are available.
Thank you!

[adilberrada]

It did not work for me as well... even after reinstall. If you figure out what is wrong, could please post here what you did it would help a lot!
On the other side, I did try this http://andrewnicolaou.co.uk/posts/2015/resin-wifi-connect-without-docker and it works well.

Thank you guys!

[shawnipoo]

Hey @sabhiram , any luck? Thank you!

[shawnipoo]

@adilberrada , how did you install resin-wifi-connect? The automatic way or manually?

[shawnipoo]

@adilberrada any news? @sabhiram any news? Thank you!

[adilberrada]

@shawnipoo I installed it in the manually way.

[shawnipoo]

Did not work for me @adilberrada .. Did you encounter any issues? When installing it cannot install wireless-tools. Did you use the latest version of Raspbian stretch?

[adilberrada]

No, I had no problem installing it ... what is the error you get?

[sabhiram]

Would appreciate if this thread is used to troubleshoot problems with this repo.

With that said, I was able to get my AP to show up but I noticed that there might have been an issue with the AP not showing up on my PI3 like stated. Can someone confirm by manually running the app - getting to the point where it says AP Enable Success and have it not show the AP? At this point, re-starting the app seemed to get the AP listed.

If this is reproducible, it would help in finding the right solution. I will see if I can put a hack in place to debug this problem.

[gregoryz7]

1. Fresh Install of latest raspbian on a PI3B:
   RASPBIAN STRETCH WITH DESKTOP
   Image with desktop based on Debian Stretch
   Version:April 2018
   Release date:2018-04-18
   Kernel version:4.14
2. First i ran instructions per the readme (including setting it up as a service). Restarted. Got the access point to show. But after navigating to 192.168.44.1:88 no page would load.
3. I turned my pi on today. It didnt even broadcast the network :(
4. I read another issue thread that you had posted. Stopped the service and launched the project manually. First it popped up with a port 88 already in use error so i killed the app using the port with
   sudo fuser -k 88/tcp . I'm not sure why it was in use. Maybe the stop service isn't cleanly stopping this app or this app is competing on launch for 88?
5. sudo npm start gives

> node server.js
Wifi is not enabled, Enabling AP for self-configure

Force reconfigure enabled - reset AP
... dhcp server failed! -
ifdown wlan0 successful...
ifup wlan0 successful...
... hostapd restarted!
... AP Enable Success!

HTTP server running...

But on loading the page I get "{{ cell.ssid }}" issue

EDIT-
the "{{cell.ssid}}" issue was an oversight in my install script. I sudo npm install bower -g but didnt bower install. After reinstalling things in order everything works up until I reboot the pi3.

Everything meaning:

1. I enter my credentials into the pi.
2. The pi connects to my network.
   But.. Then after rebooting the system I cant ping anything external like ping www.google.com
   but I can ping 192.168.44.1:88
   Although I can ping it, the access point is not broadcasting.
   I can open a browser(on the pi3), navigate to the 192.168.44.1:88 and then enter my credentials again to connect to my network. But that isn't all that helpful

[gregoryz7]

I think I have made some progress on dissecting your code.

I made a few changes:
1.

var ifconfig_fields = {
        "hw_addr":         /HWaddr\s([^\s]+)/,
        "inet_addr":       /inet ([^\s]+)/,   // WAS /inet addr:([^\s]+)/,
    },  iwconfig_fields = {
        "ap_addr":         /Access Point:\s([^\s]+)/,
        "ap_ssid":         /ESSID:\"([^\"]+)\"/,
        "unassociated":    /(unassociated)\s+Nick/,
    },  last_wifi_info = null;

Because the formatting of ifconfig's output has changed (ex. below)
From:

To:

has anyone else seen this?

2.
I also switched over the access point detection to use Mode: Managed vs Mode:Master for the iwconfig as it seems to be a reliable way to detect the mode. Did you run into issues using this?
3.
I think sometimes service hostapd restart is silently failing so I put in place a check after to see if it has switched modes and to retry 10 times (hackish) before quiting and this usually does the trick. Sometimes it takes 3 tries before it switches. I might need to put a delay on the detection to make sure im not rechecking for no good reason.
Still Working On:
1.
I still have issues on restart using both rc.local and the startup script. The changes I have made work and it switches over to Master Mode on the detect state (according to my log) but by the time the system has finished starting its no longer broadcasting. I have a feeling some other startup process is reverting wlan0 back / restarting something. Has anybody else had this happen? I can try setting a late priority for it but I am not sure which other processes should be started prior?
2.
isc-dhcp-server restart still fails from time to time. More details on that later.