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i am running a raspberry pi B+ headless and losing network connection irregulary. I am living with that since a few years, but now want to fix the problem. What would be a good approach to find out the reason?

Problem

  • ssh connection to PI not possible sometimes (today failing nearly constantly, otherwise every few days)
  • Active ssh connection aborted
  • PI cannot get internet data (pinging google fails)

Setup

  • Raspberry PI B+
  • WIFI USB Adapter EDIMAX EW 7811Un
  • My own app (digital picture frame) is running on python 3 and QT5.7

My countermeasures so far

  • self implemented software wachdog that checks some connection parameters and reboots if necessary (i would say works in 95% of the cases)
  • Auto PowerOff deactivated for the Wifi adapter by setting rtw_power_mgnt=0 and rtw_enusbss=0 in /etc/modprobe.d/8192cu.conf

Comments

  • My WIFI connection at home sometimes gets interrupted as well. But far less often than the connection to the PI fails
  • I know that similar questions have been asked before, but i was not able to adapt them to my specific problem, sorry.

Thanks for any directions

Ben

Ben
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    "checks some connection parameters and reboots if necessary" -> It can never be necessary to reboot just to fix a basic connection issue (with the exception of some driver bugs, but as far as I've noticed this is not a problem on the Pi using the built-in interfaces, and I believe 8192cu is also fine). Put another way: You need to determine how to start, stop, and restart networking connectivity properly. On current Rasbpian this should be as simple as sudo systemctl restart dhcpcd, but YMMV. – goldilocks Dec 15 '19 at 20:11
  • @goldilocks: Thanks for the "hdcpcd restart command", i didn't know it and will try it. 1) Now, how would i detect, that the connection is broke and i should restart it? 2) How could i now find out the reason, so i can fix it and don't need a restart at all? – Ben Dec 16 '19 at 12:44
  • Here's some suggestions about using ping by me from a few years ago. It's not a perfect technique (it is not very responsive as it means it can be offline for a minute depending on what you set the timings to, which is not such a big deal for a headless Pi on the LAN, but irritating if it is a laptop, etc). Currently I'm using dhcpcd hooks instead (see man dhcpcd-run-hooks), but that is probably a bit too technical. – goldilocks Dec 16 '19 at 14:15
  • BTW, if you don't shell script but are comfortable coding in python or something, use that instead as shell has a lot of gotchas, which is a PITA when the context is a background thing that only does important things on occasion (not a good learning context). That said, the verbatim script from that answer is not too brittle, but it does use a non-standard form of networking (dhclient + wpa_supplicant, no corresponding system service) which you would probably want to replace with the current Raspbian norm (systemctl ____ dhcpcd). – goldilocks Dec 16 '19 at 14:15
  • How did you verify that the problem is definitely the RasPi and not your home router, or any other component? – Ingo Dec 17 '19 at 16:36
  • @Ingo: that's exactly the most important question I have. How can I find out what's the reason? Log files etc. maybe – Ben Dec 17 '19 at 21:57
  • Any ideas which log file contains useful information? – Ben Dec 19 '19 at 07:47
  • There are some log files or a journal but it depends on the operating system. What do you use? Raspbian Buster? Please add a tag to the question. – Ingo Dec 21 '19 at 02:18

1 Answers1

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A few thoughts :-

  • This post shows a couple of possibilities. https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=129021 MrEngman I gather wrote a helpful installer script for the Edmix range of Wifis. Research a bit more yourself before trying these perhaps.

    1) Remove ifplugd

    apt-get purge ifplugd

    2) Disable any conflicting drivers, read in more detail before doing anything, but e.g.

    blacklist rtl8192cu
blacklist rtl8xxxu.conf

  • Have you tried updating your raspbian/kernel/firmware? It might help fix the situation. https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/raspbian/updating.md

    sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade

  • It may be possible that your power supply may be a bit too weak/unreliable to drive the USB wifi.

  • I remember my EDIMAX clone wifi being quite cheap and a pain to setup and use. Buying a different brand may help, though I notice the Pi brand can have this problem too.

  • Treat yourself to a newer Pi with built-in Wifi ;)

Good luck!

Alex
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