Connectivity questions

[Bodestone]

I have a Zero W with a USB stem.
I have configured it and on my Win10 Home laptop I can connect to PiName.local via VNC viewer after Bonjour was installed.
On my Win10 Pro Desktop however I get getaddrinfo: The requested name is valid, but no data of the requested type was found. (11004). This is the error I got when chancing it on the laptop without Bonjour as some posts said that skype added the relevant functionality.

I have no idea how to trouble shoot this as web search results seem to be a shot in the dark and mostly 3rd party software specific. If anyone has anything to try specifically regarding the Pi it would be great.


My second issue is that I intend to set up an additional NIC via USB and configure them to wlan0 and wlan1 by MAC.

I did a refresher search but /etc/network/interfaces came up with just source-directory /etc/network/interfaces.d which is empty.

Wifi was configured via the Raspbian GUI so I am not sure where I should look for those settings and what I need to change. All the topics I have read assume that /etc/network/interfaces is already populated.

Any pointers that way would also be greatly appreciated. It's been a couple of years since I last played with detailed NIC settings on a pi and I seem to be suffering brain freeze on search terms.

Thanks, in advance for any help.

I can split the topic if it goes squirly.

[Bodestone]

I have found posts about the changes between Jessie and Stretch and am wrapping my noggin around them.
The one I am currently reading is: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q ... ip-address

The VNC over USB remains a mystery.

[Andyroo]

Does your desktop have Bonjour on it?

You can load it direct from Apple without loading iTunes at https://support.apple.com/kb/DL999?view ... cale=en_GB (yes it’s tied in with printing).

If it is loaded check the Windows firewall has port 5353 open for TCP and UDP

[fruitoftheloom]

I have found posts about the changes between Jessie and Stretch and am wrapping my noggin around them.
The one I am currently reading is: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q ... ip-address

The VNC over USB remains a mystery.

The RPF website has documentation for Raspbian Stretch:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... iguration/

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... te-access/


No idea what a USB stem is, care to elaborate ??

[Andyroo]

WiFi config is now in /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf and detailed at https://www.systutorials.com/docs/linux ... cant.conf/ and Pis own instructions at https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentati ... ess-cli.md (though you can get to it by fuitofthelooms links.

[Bodestone]

I'll have to dig into the documentation but areas to look for to find these new, magically generated IDs for Wifi interfaces would be a help as I have found a lot of the documentation to be verbose about what you already know and assume knowledge about what you do not.

I'd like to identify the built in wifi and USb connected wifi device regardless of whether they are connected and tel which one is which (easy enough by disconneting one).

I would lieke to then assign the USB connected one as primary for connection to the network so I can go about setting the built in one ad a hotspot to contact an internal DNS server. First thing first though. Identifying Interfaces.

Pi Zero Stem is just a soldered on version of a micro male to USB 2 male OTG.
Makes it a dongle.

[Andyroo]

Not sure if this is a total fix or works on Raspbian but it’s all about forcing a naming standard on Ethernet USB devices:
https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q ... -named-enx

Rather than trying to find the address, why not set it?

[Bodestone]

Currently I can't seem to even get it to detect the USB wifi adapter.

lsusb shows a valid device:
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0bda:c811 Realtek Semiconductor Corp.

I checked that the drivers were up to date.

ifconfig only shows wlan0 however which is the built in wifi.

[Andyroo]

TBH I’ve not tried debugging USB so I’m learning as we go along

I did find this that may help https://raspberrypihq.com/how-to-add-wi ... pberry-pi/

Do you have the exact model?
Anything else plugged into the USB ports?
Does the device work on another machine?

[Bodestone]

Well, I do have theUSB stem soldered in which bridges the power lines of a full USB to the power and the data lines to the data USB.

If I plug the unit ito a PC with the USB WIFI adapter attached windows detects it.

Currently have it plugged just into a USB power outlet though to eliminate that.

Running dmesg though I do see detection:

[ 5.603104] usb 1-1: new high-speed USB device number 2 using dwc2
[ 5.853779] usb 1-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, idProduct=c811
[ 5.853805] usb 1-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
[ 5.853817] usb 1-1: Product: 802.11ac NIC

Seems to be detecting it as a generic NIC rather than specifying wireless but I have no idea if this is normal or not for this manufacturer. It specifies 802.11ac which is a valid wifi specification.

Maybe I should fork out for a pi official wifi unit but it would be nice to know why and how and what.

[Andyroo]

Does that mean its coming up as ETHx in ifconfig then? Seen that on Windows before today - can you drop the output of ifconfig to the thread please?

Other thought is the /etc/network/interfaces file needs allow-hotplug wlan1 in it:

allow-hotplug wlan1
iface wlan1 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid "YourNetworkName"
wpa-psk "YourPassword"

Real worry is if you need to build and modprobe the drivers in - this post is similar to your issue https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/q ... -chipset-o but it may not be the same chipset!

Note it does say kill the on-board NIC for power and clash issues...

[Bodestone]

I borrowed a USB ethernet adapeter from work and that connects up fine. I actually tried 2.

I needed a way to connect while setting up the built in WiFi as a hotspot so Wired/Wireless will do.
I'm guessing the wifi adapter I have just is just a little squirly with Linux or Rasspbian/Pi Zero specifically.

I have my own USB ethernet and USB pi known supported wifi adapters on order now from Pimoroni as I have confirmed other adapters are fine and it is not a hardware issue with the Pi Stem.

We'll see how I get on this weekend.

I may well be asking questions about routing web requests from a hotspot configured wifi device to internal DNS.
PiHole will be a good start but it will be the fact that requests are coming in via hotspot rather than on network wifi that will be the difference.
I'll have some reading to do in the mean time but if the new devices connect OK I can get this one closed off as "troubleshooting by plugging in stuff that actually works"

[Andyroo]

Love that close reason

Looks like a driver issue - lots of web pages come up on these chips.

Glad you’ve got a working solution so far.

[Bodestone]

Yeah. The Non-functional WiFi adapter is a registering as a realtek chipset but is not an official Realtek product.
It's actually Amazon's reccomended buy and has comments saying it owrks with linix and Pis. It even registers correctly as a USB WiFi card in windows when I plug the pi into a PC for power as the stem as the data connections are passed through.

I got the latest realtek drivers but something about the 3rd party build must be hicky.

[HawaiianPi]

... This is the error I got when chancing it on the laptop without Bonjour as some posts said that skype added the relevant functionality.

When I heard Windows 10 supported mDNS, but I still could not connect with hostname.local, I tried to figure out what was going on. To the best of my knowledge, Windows 10 has limited mDNS support via an API, but as far as I can tell, it only works with applications using the API. So Skype (which is now a Microsoft product) probably uses the mDNS API, but PuTTY and WSL do not, so I still had to install Bonjour.

I have no citation for this, because I could not find any official documentation, but it's what I was told on technet and the windows 10 support forums.

You can use WinRAR or 7-ZIP to extract the Bonjour print service installer and install just Bonjour64.msi, which will give you the Zeroconf/mDNS service without the other Apple garbage.

[Bodestone]

... This is the error I got when chancing it on the laptop without Bonjour as some posts said that skype added the relevant functionality.

When I heard Windows 10 supported mDNS, but I still could not connect with hostname.local, I tried to figure out what was going on. To the best of my knowledge, Windows 10 has limited mDNS support via an API, but as far as I can tell, it only works with applications using the API. So Skype (which is now a Microsoft product) probably uses the mDNS API, but PuTTY and WSL do not, so I still had to install Bonjour.

I have no citation for this, because I could not find any official documentation, but it's what I was told on technet and the windows 10 support forums.

You can use WinRAR or 7-ZIP to extract the Bonjour print service installer and install just Bonjour64.msi, which will give you the Zeroconf/mDNS service without the other Apple garbage.

Thanks a lot for this. I may uninstall and re-install just the needed part.

Thing is I now have Bonjour installed on the Pro machine and still get: getaddrinfo: The requested name is valid, but no data of the requested type was found. (11004)

Also, even when working, it won't have the remote access on a new system until I can remote in and configure it to the network unless I carry around a wired USB adapter or first connect it to my phone hotspot to configure any new wifi so it really doesn't add that much in the way of portability for me and I would also need to install 3rd party software on all of those devices.

I think, when I am more familiar with the linux commandline and configuration, I'll switch the USB port back to serial mode and just use SSH. I don't know yet but installing software pn the PC to do a lookup to an IP address that can't exist without already having got into the device.... OK so it removes the need to set up a static IP for the connection. That's worth considering. Rigmarole once.

Sorry. I let my chain of thought leak into the comment but it may help others in the future thinking similar things.

OK. I am likely to be connecting this at My Folk's place 300 miles away visited a few times a year. With VNC and the zeroconf services installed once I have it on the network I can be confident of a VNC connection as long as it is plugged into that PC. It doesn't work if it is plugged into any other device on the network however than the one you are using but that is OK.