'lo again, all... and apologies if this is in the wrong place; no doubt, our friendly neighbourhood moderators will take care of it for me...
I'm having issues with how some wireless networking USB dongles are working (or not).
I've had a look around the forums and elsewhere but I'm still not sure about how to approach the problem... or what information is necessary.
I did find a bit of a discussion (see viewtopic.php?p=35964 ) and that helped me create a script that indicates the sort of troubles I'm having.
In short, when I use some wireless dongles, the available networks are what I expect to see. However, if I use other dongles, I see mostly totally different networks; some of the networks found by the first dongle appear again when using the 2nd dongle and some don't. I don't think there's anything special about 2.4GHz or 5GHz bands - they're all affected in the same way.
The bash script I use to create the 'available networks' lists is here:
Code: Select all
#!/bin/sh
# Trying to work out why the wireless dongles misbehave (for the upteenth time)...
# jjg, 22-Oct-2023
# Ref: https://forum.puppylinux.com/viewtopic.php?p=35964&hilit=nmcli#p35964
#
echo Setting-Up...
killall wpa_supplicant
sleep 2
cat > /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf << EOF
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
country=US
EOF
wpa_supplicant -B -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
wpa_cli add_network
wpa_cli set_network 0 ssid '"Channel2B"'
wpa_cli set_network 0 key_mgmt NONE
wpa_cli enable_network 0
sleep 2
echo Scanning...
wpa_cli scan
sleep 2
echo Scan results...
wpa_cli scan_results | sed -r 's/^[^\t]+\t/--masked--\t/'
exit
# [eof]
I generally start a live USB session (no save file) of Xenialpup64 7.5 (or most any contemporary 64-bit variant) and after going through the normal initial setup, I then go through the 'Network Wizard' process. I reboot with a 'new session' and a different wireless dongle and go through the same process again.
The attached files show some basic information from Pup Sys-Info and ifconfig, as well as the output from the above script.
The router I'm using is a 'Gen 2' Arcadyan LH1000, Firmware 0.19.07r and it's connected to (Australia's) NBN via Telstra's HFC (Hybrid Fibre Coaxial) cable+fibre network.
The currently 'working' dongle (noname Micro USB WiFi adpater) gives download speeds around 1-2 MBps and the currently 'non-working' dongle (TP-LINK TL-WN721N USB WiFi Adapter) gives closer to 4-5 MBps when it's working well. Another PC (running Xenialpup64 7.5) with its own (Netgear N150 WiFi USB adapter) dongle (which sometimes has the same troubles) is currently running at about 1 MBps. A PC with an (RJ45) Ethernet direct connection into the router runs at about 5.5-6.5 MBps. Note: The download speeds are determined by downloading a ~200MB file from the Aarnet mirror (http://ftp.aarnet.edu.au/pub/puppylinux/) using wget.
This has been happening for some years.. and is sending me 'round the twist. Rebooting (and/or power cycling) the router (even more than once) doesn't fix things... but at some stage, some magic happens and things will go back to normal.. but that may take months. In the meantime, I juggle dongles so I can somehow connect to my local network.
If there's a troubleshooter script.. or some other way to see what's going bung, I'd appreciate some help...
Fanx!