Re: Wifi error log for Bookworm?

Steven Hirsch <snhirsch@gmail.com> wrote:

On 10/24/24 23:02, bp@www.zefox.net wrote:

My Pi5 running bookworm has developed flaky WiFi behavior about
24 hours after the latest upgrade.
 
Where should I look for error messages? Nothing shows up on the
screen during negotiation, it appears that the Pi negotiates
for a minute or two and then gives up. Two red X's appear in
the Wifi entry in the top-right menu bar and that's it.
 
The only visible hint is that even if the connection is specified
at 2.4 GHz a wavemon window is left showing what appears to be a
5 GHz attempt. My access point doesn't support 5 GHz, making the
attempt, if it is one, appear to be a mistake.
 
 
The access point works with other devices, so I don't think it's
the problem.
 
Thanks for reading and any suggestions!

 
This sounds very familiar.  I fought the same pitched battle here with Wifi
and Pi5 under Bookworm.  Finally discovered that HDMI output interferes with
the 2.4 GHz band.  Try running headless over ssh and see if that's any better?
 Made an improvement here for 2.4 GHz, but did not help 5 GHz connectivity.
 
I finally ended up replacing an 8 year old Wifi router and that fixed the 5
GHz band.  Something about the Pi5 Wifi implementation really does not like
older routers.

 

What router are you using? Mine is indiputably old, D-Link DI-524, but it
works with everything else now and worked with the Pi5 except for two major
episodes, a couple months ago and again now. In the meantime it was fine..

The idea that hdmi is the culprit can't be ruled out, but I'm skeptical it's
the source of the trouble. This particular Pi5 has _always_ been used with
hdmi operating. Wifi has been a problem only intermittently, usuall a day
after an OS update. In the first instance, the problem simply went away
after a subsequent update. In the present instance, the problem appeared
a day after an update and persisted through yesterday, when I moved the
Pi5 next to the router to check signal strength. Initially wifi worked,
then it stopped working, failing silently and not able to re-connect.

Last night wifi connected and remains up as I write this. After turning
wifi off, it turned back on without trouble while hdmi was active, something
that didn't happen yesterday. Wavemon presently reports -31dBm on the active
connection and -58dBm for the strongest interferer. I'm using 2417MHz ch 2,
the strongest interferer is 2437MHz ch 6, which has been consistent over time.

Thanks for writing!

bob prohaska