Pi Zero W doesn't appear on wifi after install

[ztakacs]

Hi,

I did the following (and nothing else):
1. copied 2017-08-16-raspbian-stretch to a micro SD card
2. put the card into a Pi 3
3. enabled SSH and wifi (set the local wifi credentials in the wpa_supplicant.conf)
4. added fix IP for wlan0 interface
5. Pi3 appeared on the wireless network, SSH worked
6. put the same card into a Pi Zero W
7. the Pi Zero W doesn't appear

The green led blinks for a few seconds, later it's constantly on.
Unfortunately I have no adapters for screen or keyboard.
Nothing's connected to the Zero.
The card works in the Pi 3 every time.

Please help me, what did I wrong?

[drgeoff]

Do you have MAC address filtering enabled on your Wi-Fi router?

[mattmiller]

The question will prob end up being - how come its working on your Pi3?

1. Can you post your wpa_supplicant.conf as requirements have changed between Jessie and Stretch
2. Can you try it without the fixed IP in your Pi3 - then move it to your PiZeroW and see what happens (I'm assuming the PiZeroW already tested working with an older Raspbian version?)

[ztakacs]

Do you have MAC address filtering enabled on your Wi-Fi router?

No, there's no filtering.

[ztakacs]

The question will prob end up being - how come its working on your Pi3?

1. Can you post your wpa_supplicant.conf as requirements have changed between Jessie and Stretch
2. Can you try it without the fixed IP in your Pi3 - then move it to your PiZeroW and see what happens (I'm assuming the PiZeroW already tested working with an older Raspbian version?)

1. I use the same physical SD card with the same files in the Pi 3 and the P0W
2. It's untested, because at the moment I have no periferia to connect. I already ordered but it will take days to arrive.

content of /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf:

Code: Select all

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

network={
	ssid="myssid"
	psk="mywifipassword"
}

[mattmiller]

It's untested, because at the moment I have no periferia to connect. I already ordered but it will take days to arrive.

whats a periferia?

Can you try it out without the fixed IP in the meantime?

[ztakacs]

whats a periferia?

Can you try it out without the fixed IP in the meantime?

No, that's my original problem. I can't connect screen or anything else. The only sign of life would be a successful ssh-connection or something similar.

[Canedje]

whats a periferia?

Can you try it out without the fixed IP in the meantime?

No, that's my original problem. I can't connect screen or anything else. The only sign of life would be a successful ssh-connection or something similar.

You can SSH without fixed IP address by checking the actual IP address in your router.

[drgeoff]

'periferia' is someone's wrong idea of how to spell 'peripherals'.

[mattmiller]

Obvious once you've pointed it out
To OP

You don't need static IP - your router will hand an Ip address out and you can usually log onto it and find out what IP its given to your Pi

(or if you have 'droid phone - download an app call Fing and use that)

So if you set up a clean card again and miss off the static IP setup - what happens then?

[ztakacs]

Basically the Zero should work with the Pi3 SD card, shouldn't it?

[B.Goode]

Basically the Zero should work with the Pi3 SD card, shouldn't it?

Not necessarily. But given your choice of downloaded OS, yes it should.

And maybe it does.

Maybe it is the router on your network that is 'confused' ?

When you fired up the RPi3 you (ie Raspbian) wiil have sent network messages saying "associate packets from this Mac address with the static IP I have chosen." And everything was fine.

Suddenly the router gets messages from that same IP but from a different Mac address. What is it to do? How does it know what is happening? Is there an untrusted intruder on the network trying to intercept legitimate data? Maybe the router is taking the conservative option of sending replies back to the original Mac address on the no-longer-connected RPi3?

I agree with the suggestion to try the connection using the address assigned by your network's dhcp server.

For this reason, among others, I advocate using the address reservation tools in your router dhcp configuration to hand out predicted IP addresses to your clients.

[ztakacs]

So it turned out that the Pi Zero gets a DHCP IP, 192.168.0.96
It doesn't matter that I use these settings:

Code: Select all

auto wlan0
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
address 192.168.0.8
netmask 255.255.255.0
gateway 192.168.0.254
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

If I run

Code: Select all

sudo ifconfig wlan0 192.168.0.8

, it works. After reboot it forgets static IP and uses 0.96 again.
Remember, this same microSD card works in the Pi3, it gets the static IP I want.

[ztakacs]

The problem is solved (worked around...)

The quoted wlan0 config was in the /etc/network/interfaces.d/wlan0 file, and /etc/network/interfaces contained only one line:

Code: Select all

source-directory /etc/network/interfaces.d

It looks like this source-directory directive doesn't work on the Pi Zero W, but works on Pi 3...
Now everything is in the good old /etc/network/interfaces file and my Zero gets the correct static IP as well.

[SurferTim]

That is because you were attempting to set static network settings in /etc/network/interfaces.

You should must set your static network settings in /etc/dhcpcd.conf.

[mattmiller]

If I may quote from my previous post

The question will prob end up being - how come its working on your Pi3?

Glad its sorted