Installing OSMC on RPi4B but fail to set WiFi connect

General Discussion
24

The state is:

  • Initial SDcard content from RPI or OSMC site
  • System started and there is an install process
  • Kodi starts and I can go to Settings/MyOSMC
  • And on the network function I can enable and use Ethernet, but not WiFi

All I have done is enable the Ethernet networking and connected to a media source SMB share as VIDEO/Files source.
Then I could view the video files stored there.

The stuff I have done regarding networking is all done inside the MyOSMC app using the functions available there. I will not restore any settings saved as backup on another system until I get WiFi going and maybe not even then. Have not use a backup yet.

Regarding ā€œfollowing the instructions aboveā€:

Which instructions? There are hardly any availableā€¦
Except if you refer to this:

sudo connmanctl
agent on
scan wifi
services
connect <Put here the ID of your Wifi as shown in the services output>

which probably only works if WiFi is already switched onā€¦

25

REPLY TO SELF
I tested this procedure and it worked in getting the WiFi online like this:

  • In Settings/MyOSMC enable adapter WiFi (it will not connect)
  • Keep the Wired (Ethernet) adapter enabled too
  • In an SSH session via Ethernet run these commands:
sudo connmanctl
agent on
scan wifi
services
connect <Put here the long ID of your Wifi as shown in the services output>
  • Since the WiFi network is switched on the above worked. So exit connmanctl:
    quit
  • Now check networking with ifconfig and there will be both eth0 and wlan0 active.
  • I can connect with PuTTY from Windows on both the Ethernet and WiFi IP addresses.

So it seems like this is now working, but it turns out that if I disable Ethernet in MyOSMC it also affects the WiFi connection so it too drops out!

What seems to work is to unplug the Ethernet cable but leaving both adapters enabled in MyOSMC will leave the WiFi working still.
So hopefully this will be working for my new OSMC media server!

26

You donā€™t need to disable Ethernet, you can just remove the cable.

The ones that were posted above in this thread.

This wouldā€™ve been useful.

The thing is ā€“ it is plug and play. You are not the first and only user to try WiFi on a Raspberry Piā€¦

27

On an RPi with WiFi adapter built-in and running Raspbian or PiOS I have NEVER failed to get WiFi operational by just supplying the SSID and passphrase. And I have like 15-20 RPi:s in operationā€¦

This unit I am running OSMC on is a newly acquired RPi4B 2GB device and I first loaded PiOS on it and all worked just fine.

Then switched to an SDcard for OSMC created by RapberryPiImager (where I selected OSMC for RPi4).

And when that failed on WiFi I created another SDcard by downloading the OSMC RPi4 image from your site and writing it onto the SDcard using Balena Etcher.

And that did not work in the same way as the first card did not:
Everything except WiFi fully functionalā€¦

So I think my conclusion is not especially strange, there must be something missing in the OSMC installer (which runs when the SDcard is first started)ā€¦

28

Although the images are identical, you could use the official OSMC installer on your computer instead for an easier setup.

I donā€™t have specific details about your setup, but would assume itā€™s an environmental issue. There are a lot of Raspberry Pi users (they are the largest user base).

As a test, I just installed 2023.06-1 on a Pi 4 and connected to WiFi via the UI without issue.

Out of curiosity, try and make a WiFi hotspot on your phone and see if you can connect to it.

29

I cannot do that now because it is packed up to go to the summer home.
But as part of the earlier endeavor I tried to connect to my guest network, which uses a different router brand and is not especially tweaked.
Same exact issueā€¦

I will bring some stuff including the other SDcard which was made by the RaspberryPiImager, so I should be able to plug that in and check if it can then connect.
At best tomorrow evening.

It is a simpler environment over there, no other WiFi hotspots around except for mine.

30

@sam_nazarko I have now also used this Raspberry Pi Imager 1.7.5 and BalenaEtcher 1.18.4 to write the current OSMC RPi 4 image to an SD card and compared it with the result from the OSMC installer. The partition size is the same afterwards, but with the third-party installers at least the file preseed.cfg is missing, which contains the content

 d-i target/storage string sd
 d-i network/interface string eth
 d-i network/auto boolean true

Obviously this file is used while the debian installation process but is missing now before the sd card is inserted for the OSMC installation.

Can that explain the problems here?

31

Only the OSMC installer writes this file. The other installers just write out the block image and leave it like that. If that file isnā€™t written, then the user has to manually configure WiFi. But it wonā€™t prevent WiFi from being configured in My OSMC

32

FOLLOW-UP and end of threadā€¦
I thought I had nailed the WiFi problem and had a running RPi4 with the latest OSMC (installed and configured from scratch) where I had used all the info here to enable WiFi, which was non-working out of the gate.
This was working for a day or two and then it again lost WiFi!

So I decided enough is enough and unplugged Ethernet from the TV and plugged it into the OSMC device instead. The TV is happy using the WiFi by just entering the SSID and passphraseā€¦
Now it is working for several days on end. eth0 is rock solid.

Bottom line:
WiFi has a lot of quirks that makes it not worth the effort to try to use.