RPi 3 built-in wifi not working headless

Question

I'm trying to set up a Raspberry Pi 3 so it can connect to the network over WiFi.

This is my /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

country=GB
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

network={
    ssid="wifi_name"
    psk="wifi_password"
}

This is my /etc/network/interfaces

# The loopback network interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# The primary (wired) network interface
iface eth0 inet dhcp

# The wifi (wireless) network interface
auto wlan0
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
        wpa-ssid "wifi_name"
        wpa-psk "wifi_password"

Running iwconfig:

pi@rpi3:~ $ iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

wlan0     IEEE 802.11  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Access Point: Not-Associated   Tx-Power=31 dBm   
          Retry short limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:on

eth0      no wireless extensions.

Running ifconfig:

pi@rpi3:~ $ ifconfig -a
eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr ____  
          inet addr:192.168.0.14  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: _____ Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:1874 errors:0 dropped:2 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:162 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:95269 (93.0 KiB)  TX bytes:21921 (21.4 KiB)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr ____  
          inet6 addr: _____ Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:12 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:23 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:1188 (1.1 KiB)  TX bytes:3422 (3.3 KiB)

Are there log files somewhere to look through / further calls that will help to diagnose why I cannot connect wirelessly?

It does not work because you fiddled with /etc/network/interfaces. See How do I set up networking/WiFi/Static IP — Milliways, Jul 18 '17 at 00:35

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 17 '17 at 16:43

I note two things:

You don't list the wpa supplicant in /etc/network/interfaces for wlan0. Check with a fresh interfaces file how the wlan sections should look like, it lacks the wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf.
Instead, you duplicate the SSID an d PSK data here, which belong to the wpa_supplicant.conf, if you want to use that one instead of the interfaces file.

I would suggest to start over from a /etc/network/interfaces copied from a fresh image. As for logs, /var/log/syslog might be a good place to check anyway.

RPi 3 built-in wifi not working headless

1 Answers1