Official WiFi dongle stopped connecting suddenly

[pwalden]

I have a Pi B 512 MB with a official WiFi dongle. The Pi has headless Stretch and uses wpa_supplicant to connect to my local WiFi.

It was working fine until yesterday when it refused to connect to the local WiFi after a reboot. I swapped out the official dongle for an Edimax dongle an everything is working again.

With the official dongle I can scan and see all the nearby APs, so the dongle is not broken. It just refuses to connect/authenticate.

I ran wpa_supplicant in debug and this seems to be the relevant section. Something about reason 3. Any thoughts or ideas welcome.

Code: Select all

nl80211: Connect request send successfully
wlan0: Setting authentication timeout: 10 sec 0 usec
EAPOL: External notification - EAP success=0
EAPOL: External notification - EAP fail=0
EAPOL: External notification - portControl=Auto
EAPOL: disable timer tick
wlan0: Authentication with 00:00:00:00:00:00 timed out.
Added BSSID 00:00:00:00:00:00 into blacklist
TDLS: Remove peers on disassociation
wlan0: WPA: Clear old PMK and PTK
wlan0: Request to deauthenticate - bssid=00:00:00:00:00:00 pending_bssid=00:00:00:00:00:00 reason=3 state=ASSOCIATING
TDLS: Tear down peers
wpa_driver_nl80211_disconnect(reason_code=3)
wlan0: Event DEAUTH (12) received
wlan0: Deauthentication notification
wlan0:  * reason 3 (locally generated)

[Andyroo]

Have you moved the Pi or the router or got a new Microwave / DECT phone?

Reason three is the access point disconnecting you - possibly a range issue, problem with the router, security limit from the router or even duplicate IP / Mac issue

Try a reboot of the router / AP if you cannot pin down any changes.

[DougieLawson]

If you've used rpi-update (NOT RECOMMENDED) then you'll want to add the missing wireless pieces.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 0#p1433135

[pwalden]

Have you moved the Pi or the router or got a new Microwave / DECT phone?

Reason three is the access point disconnecting you - possibly a range issue, problem with the router, security limit from the router or even duplicate IP / Mac issue

Try a reboot of the router / AP if you cannot pin down any changes.

None of the aforementioned changes have happened. The dongle just stopped connecting after a recent reboot.

The router is set to auto-reboot every day in the early morning.

[pwalden]

If you've used rpi-update (NOT RECOMMENDED) then you'll want to add the missing wireless pieces.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/view ... 0#p1433135

Hmmm... did not know that. I saw the announcement of 4.19 availability and used rpi-update as recommended by some other web blogger. Lesson learned.

However, the rpi-update did not cause the original problem. Here is the sequence of events:

• 1. the dongle stopped connecting.
  2. Tried to debug. Verified dongle was still functional, could scan, but it was not connecting. Ran wpa_supplicant in debug. Tried 2 different access points with now luck. Searched web, read that wpa_supplicant in raspbian is older version and had some issues.
  3. Did a apt-get update and upgrade. Dongle still did not connect.
  4. Noticed linux version did not change. Did rpi-update. Dongle still did not connect.
  5. Swapped out official dongle for edimax. Started working again.

Will look into fixing the re-adding missing wireless pieces.

Is there a rpi-update rollback capability?

[pwalden]

I rolled back to a jessie card image backup I made on Jan 8, 2019. The official dongle is working again.

I will now try a careful upgrade to stretch and see if if stops again.

[fruitoftheloom]

I rolled back to a jessie card image backup I made on Jan 8, 2019. The official dongle is working again.

I will now try a careful upgrade to stretch and see if if stops again.

Moving from Jessie to Stretch is not recommended, advise start with a fresh install and never use rpi-update:

https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/raspbian-stretch/

[pwalden]

I re-installed Stretch from the Nov 11, 2018 fresh image. All is well again. The official dongle is working again.

I did a apt-get update/upgrade after the install and received this news, which did not seem to matter:

apt-listchanges: News
---------------------

wpasupplicant (2:2.6-19) unstable; urgency=medium

With this release, wpasupplicant no longer respects the system
default minimum TLS version, defaulting to TLSv1.0, not TLSv1.2. If
you're sure you will never connect to EAP networks requiring anything less
than 1.2, add this to your wpasupplicant configuration:

tls_disable_tlsv1_0=1
tls_disable_tlsv1_1=1

wpasupplicant also defaults to a security level 1, instead of the system
default 2. Should you need to change that, change this setting in your
wpasupplicant configuration:

openssl_ciphers=DEFAULT@SECLEVEL=2

Unlike wpasupplicant, hostapd still respects system defaults.

-- Andrej Shadura <andrewsh@debian.org> Sat, 15 Dec 2018 14:22:18 +0100