Another case of OSMC dongle won't connect at 5G

Help and Support Raspberry Pi
1

Hi all,

I’ve spent a fair amount of time getting my Pi3/OSMC kit working. That latest status is that it was working OK, except I needed to use a wired connection to overcome buffering issues. I concluded that my 2.4G wifi network was too congested to support streaming video (live or recorded TV or other video) from my backend in another room of my house. I concluded I needed a 5G 802.11ac dongle, so I bought one from the OSMC store.

My new OSMC dongle arrived today and I’ve been unable to get it working after about three hours of fiddling. I now humbly seek the advice of the experts here. I have read what seem to be related posts, but I can’t figure out what to do from them. My knowledge of Linux is very shallow.

Here is a summary of what I’ve done:

I started with a wired connection enabled and the (onboard) wifi adapter disabled via My OSMC > Pi Config > Network > Wired > check “Enable Adapter” and My OSMC > Pi Config > Network > Wireless > uncheck “Enable Adapter”. This setup has been working well, with good performance watching Live TV, recorded TV, and other videos.

Then, upon receiving the new OSMC dongle, I navigated to My OSMC > Pi Config > Config Editor > Open Config.txt Editor > New Entry. I typed the entry “dtoverlay=sdhost” (without the quotes), exited and rebooted. Upon rebooting, I navigated again to My OSMC > Pi Config > Config Editor and scrolled down to the bottom of the file and saw the entry I had just created was present. I did note that this new entry occurred under #NOOBS Auto-generated Settings with several other items

Next, with the system working on the wired connection, I proceeded to disable the wired adapter and enable the wireless adapter. Upon enabling the wireless adapter, I located my 5G network and selected it. I said “yes” that I wanted to connect to this network, was sent to the password page where I entered my password. I got no confirmation that I had connected, but I checked my router and there was an entry for my Pi with the connection band at 5G. An IP address was assigned. I rebooted and I ended up with no connection, my backend wouldn’t connnect, etc. I tried several variations of this theme with re-enabling wireless, enabling wifi, logging in to my 5G network, and rebooting, with no joy.

Then, with the wired adapter disabled and wifi enabled, I disconnected from my 5G network and attempted to connect to my 2.4G network. I selected my 2.4G network from the list of available wifi networks, said yes, and entered my password. Then I got a message saying that my attempt to connect had failed. I tried again with a keyboard to make sure I hadn’t made any mistakes with my password. This time, I did not get the message that my attempt failed, but I did note that no “default gateway” had been assigned, no secondary DNS had been assigned, and for status, it said wlan0 (no internet). Not a good sign. There was an opportunity to select “Apply” or “Reset”. I selected “Apply” and status changed to “No internet”. Then I rebooted. Evidently I connected at 2.4G, the backend PVR and files loaded. I could connect to Live TV but couldn’t watch it because of buffering.

So, I currently have my Pi connected at 2.4G. I can access Live TV but can’t watch it due to buffering. If I click on “Weather”, I get nothing, so evidently I have no internet connection, even at 2.4G. When I try to connect at 5G, nothing happens, nothing “works”, even though my router says the Pi is connected at 5G. Based on other posts I’ve read here, it sounds like maybe my attempt to disable the onboard wifi might have failed, but I have no insight on how to check that.

Can anyone help me?

Thanks!

2

What did you do to try and disable on board WiFi?

3

Maybe a NOOBS issue?

4

I navigated to My OSMC > Pi Config > Config Editor > Open Config.txt Editor > New Entry and typed dtoverlay=sdhost. Then I exited, saved, and rebooted.

Thank you.

5

That certainly sounds plausible, but I’m not sure what to do if this is the case.

Thank you!

6

Let’s first check if your adapter is enabled.
Enable wired (connected) and also wifi and upload logs via grab-logs -A (or MyOSMC log uploader) and share the URL

7

Uploaded all logs here: https://paste.osmc.tv/lowotohixo

Thanks for your help.

8

This looks ok that the OSMC dongle is used and connected to your 2.4Ghz network.
I suggest we first figure out your issues on the 2.4 GHZ connection before we figure out the 5Ghz problem.

Maybe as a first step try to add BackgroundScanning = false to the file /etc/connman.conf

> Mar 01 16:40:28 RPi3OSMC1 wpa_supplicant[374]: wlan0: Trying to associate with d4:b2:7a:44:b3:76 (SSID='29CoveRd' freq=2437 MHz)
> Mar 01 16:40:28 RPi3OSMC1 wpa_supplicant[374]: wlan0: Association request to the driver failed
> Mar 01 16:40:28 RPi3OSMC1 kernel: ==>rt_ioctl_siwfreq::SIOCSIWFREQ(Channel=6)
> Mar 01 16:40:29 RPi3OSMC1 kernel: PeerBeaconAtJoinAction(): HT-CtrlChannel=6, CentralChannel=>6
> Mar 01 16:40:29 RPi3OSMC1 kernel: PeerBeaconAtJoinAction(): Set CentralChannel=6
> Mar 01 16:40:29 RPi3OSMC1 kernel: AdjustChannelRelatedValue(): Input BW=0, rf_channel=6, vht_bw=1, Channel=6, vht_cent_ch=42!
> Mar 01 16:40:29 RPi3OSMC1 wpa_supplicant[374]: wlan0: Associated with d4:b2:7a:44:b3:76
> Mar 01 16:40:29 RPi3OSMC1 kernel: Rcv Wcid(1) AddBAReq
> Mar 01 16:40:29 RPi3OSMC1 kernel: Start Seq = 00000001
> Mar 01 16:40:29 RPi3OSMC1 kernel: RTMP_TimerListAdd: add timer obj b02abbc4!
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 wpa_supplicant[374]: wlan0: WPA: Key negotiation completed with d4:b2:7a:44:b3:76 [PTK=CCMP GTK=CCMP]
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 wpa_supplicant[374]: wlan0: CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to d4:b2:7a:44:b3:76 completed [id=0 id_str=]
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 wpa_supplicant[374]: bgscan simple: Failed to enable signal strength monitoring
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 connmand[298]: wlan0 {RX} 44 packets 10093 bytes
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 connmand[298]: wlan0 {TX} 44 packets 4464 bytes
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 connmand[298]: wlan0 {update} flags 102467 <UP,RUNNING,LOWER_UP>
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 connmand[298]: wlan0 {newlink} index 3 address 7C:DD:90:B7:67:5B mtu 1500
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 connmand[298]: wlan0 {newlink} index 3 operstate 6 <UP>
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 avahi-daemon[300]: Joining mDNS multicast group on interface wlan0.IPv4 with address 192.168.1.94.
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 kernel: ===>rt_ioctl_giwscan. 9(9) BSS returned, data->length = 1503
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 avahi-daemon[300]: New relevant interface wlan0.IPv4 for mDNS.
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 avahi-daemon[300]: Registering new address record for 192.168.1.94 on wlan0.IPv4.
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 kernel: RTMP_TimerListAdd: add timer obj b02a91b0!
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 avahi-daemon[300]: Withdrawing address record for fe80::7edd:90ff:feb7:675b on wlan0.
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 connmand[298]: ipconfig state 3 ipconfig method 1
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 avahi-daemon[300]: Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface wlan0.IPv6 with address fe80::7edd:90ff:feb7:675b.
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 avahi-daemon[300]: Interface wlan0.IPv6 no longer relevant for mDNS.
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 connmand[298]: wlan0 {add} address 192.168.1.94/24 label wlan0 family 2
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 connmand[298]: wlan0 {add} route 192.168.1.0 gw 0.0.0.0 scope 253 <LINK>
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 connmand[298]: wlan0 {add} route 0.0.0.0 gw 0.0.0.0 scope 253 <LINK>
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 connmand[298]: wlan0 {del} route fe80:: gw :: scope 0 <UNIVERSE>
> Mar 01 16:40:30 RPi3OSMC1 kernel: RTMP_TimerListAdd: add timer obj b02a9204!
9

Thank you. Just to make sure I understand, I assume I need to do something like sudo nano /etc/connman.conf and add the line you indicate. Is that correct?

Then would you like me to post logs immediately, or try to do something first before I do that?

Thanks again very much for your help.

10

Correct

I would suggest you reboot after that and unplug wired and check if you get connectivity via wireless

11

OK. I just did as you described. Upon re-boot, I could see Live TV, so I was connected to my backend. However, I couldn’t connect to Weather. I checked the connection on My OSMC > Networking > Wireless and saw that it was not connected to the internet.

I tried to upload logs but I got the following error message: “Could not retrieve URL. Copy Logs to SD Card Instead?” I selected no.

Any further help is greatly appreciated.

12

So I think we need to dig deeper. I assume you use DHCP to assign the IP?
What is the IP/Gateway/DNS you can see when connected to wired and compare that with Wireless.

Go to the command line and try to ping the gateway IP, does that work?
Details regarding how to access the command line interface can be found here on our Wiki: Accessing the command line - General - OSMC

13

Yes

Wired: IP of the Pi: 192.168.1.96, Primary DNS, 192.168.1.254, Secondary DNS, 192.168.1.254
Wireless: IP of the Pi: 192.168.1.94, Primary DNS, 192.168.1.254, Secondary DNS, None

I can ping by logging in with Putty from 192.168.1.96 and 192.168.1.94.
I can no longer get to the command line by going to Power > Exit. If I do that, the device just hangs and I need to unplug it.

Again, thanks much for sticking with me.

14

I assume that is with wired plugged in so not a real test.

That is really odd. Are you sure your power supply is up for the job?
Maybe you want to do a backup and start with a fresh install?

15

The power supply has been working fine until I tried to use the new dongle, that includes connecting wirelessly (with the onboard 2.4G adapter) and wired. It meets the output specs I’ve read about it, but I don’t have them handy.

No. I unplugged the wire and logged in with Putty to the ip address assigned to the wireless adapter. The ping was successful.

Well I could, I guess. I sure was looking to avoid that. If that’s the solution, then that’s what I’ll do.

16

One more point before we give up for the night (I assume it’s night where you are ). I’d like to rule out a defective adapter before I start over. Is that possible?

17

Ok, that is now interesting. Let us continue from there with wired disconnect.
So you can login via SSH and even ping the Gateway.
How about DNS?
ping 192.168.1.254 works?
ping www.google.com does it resolve a IP?

18

Unlikely as you get a LAN connection.
For me there seems to be more likely a DNS problem.

19

Yes. That’s what I’ve been doing. I log in via SSH and ping 192.168.1.254. Should I have been pinging something else?

Yes. Here is what I get:
PING www.google.com (74.125.201.106): 56 data bytes

I’m very surprised I get an IP address with google since it’s telling me I don’t have an internet connection.

20

Well the DNS resolution comes from your local router.
So but for what ever reason your router is not letting the packets out to the internet.
Suggest to check any QoS or Firewall setting on the router.