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Raspberry Pi WLAN setup

berrylan.org

61–70 of 86 posts

Re: Raspberry Pi WLAN setup

#61
post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But /boot is a FAT32 partition, it's mountable on practiacally any os I'm aware of. On a mac it'll be under /Volumes/boot.

Unless I’m mistaken, /boot isn’t where any kind of network / ssh config would live.

Ssh can be enabled and wifi configured in /boot.

Re: Raspberry Pi WLAN setup

#62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding was that this always requires an entire second wifi module? On my big expensive desktop computer, I can only ever recieve or broadcast a wifi network, never both. Unless I install an additional wifi adapter.

The Pixel 3/3 XL (and several other Android smartphones) can run both a hotspot and Wi-Fi simultaneously. [1] I could be wrong, but I am fairly sure these phones only have a single Wi-Fi module. [1] https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/11/03/pixel-3-3-xl-suppor...

Probably a special chipset or driver that is not freely available.

Re: Raspberry Pi WLAN setup

#63
> ETCH THE IMAGE

> Download the BerryLan flavoured Raspbian image and flash the SD Card. We recommend Etcher to do that.

I’m curious. Why would anyone recommend people download and run a multi-100mb electron app instead of just using dd?

Especially for projects like this aimed at medium technical people.

Re: Raspberry Pi WLAN setup

#64
This seems like it would be super useful prior to Raspbian Stretch for developers using Apple products.

Prior to stretch the wpa_supplicant.conf file needed to be modified in the main Raspbian partition which is inaccessible on the unix machine without setting up a virtual linux box and creating a vb disk image linked to the sd card. It was a bit of a pain.

With Stretch you can just add a wpa_supplicant.conf file and an empty ssh file to the boot partition which is accessible and you should be ready to go.

This still solves the pain point of there being lots of outdated headless instructions out there telling you to modify wpa_supplicant.conf in /etc/wpa_supplicant on the main partition. Would have saved me a ton of time that's for sure!

Looks nice and clean as well, design wise.

Re: Raspberry Pi WLAN setup

#65
post #6

or create /boot/wpa_supplicant.conf and touch /boot/ssh and it will do the right thing on boot.

You have to use the “with desktop” version, I once spent a few hours fighting to get the wifi set up because i was using the “lite” version. The lite version doesn’t react to the wpa_supplicant.conf file.

Re: Raspberry Pi WLAN setup

#66
post #48
post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to see one addition to that. On boot, it should also write a file, /boot/MAC-address, if it does not exist. This should be a text file containing the Pi's MAC address. With that, those whose networks require whitelisting by MAC address who are trying to set up a headless Pi could boot it once to get it to write its MAC address to the SD card, whitelist that MAC address and assign it a static IP address, crea…

I know you're talking about Someone Else's Network (tm), but isn't whitelisting MAC kind of pointless? MAC can almost always be freely set to any value.

MAC whitelisting as a security measure against deliberate, reasonably knowledgeable attackers is indeed of questionable value. But that's not the only reason you might use MAC whitelisting.

Another use is to prevent accidents. Suppose you have multiple networks. For example, at work we have separate networks for machines that handle different kinds of sensitive data, with each network having the appropriate incoming and outgoing access rules to protect the kind of sensitive data on that network.

In such a situation, MAC whitelisting can protect against someone accidentally plugging a machine into the wrong network. Someone goofs and plugs a machine with customer financial data into a network that has unrestricted outside internet access? It's not on the whitelist for that network, doesn't get an IP address, and they quickly notice something is wrong.

In a home WiFi setting, MAC whitelisting could be used for partial sharing of your WiFi with people who don't know much about networking. Maybe I want to allow my neighbor, who has no idea what a MAC address is, to use my WiFi with his phone, but not to use it with his other devices. I could give him the access info and then use MAC whitelisting to just allow his phone on.

Finally, even if MAC whitelisting is not being used it would still be nice to be able to find out the Pi's MAC address easily, so that you can assign it a static IP address on your WiFi network.

Yes, you can find it out by letting it get a dynamic address on your network, going into the router settings and looking at the device table and figuring out which unexplained device is the Pi, and noting the MAC address.

Then you can configure the router to assign that MAC address a static IP address. In a world where consumer router firmware didn't often suck that would be fine. I've run into routers that once they have assigned a dynamic IP to a MAC address make it difficult to assign it a static IP address.

It's a lot easier if you can do the static IP assignment in the router before the Pi has ever connected to that network.

Re: Raspberry Pi WLAN setup

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My understanding was that this always requires an entire second wifi module? On my big expensive desktop computer, I can only ever recieve or broadcast a wifi network, never both. Unless I install an additional wifi adapter.

The Pixel 3/3 XL (and several other Android smartphones) can run both a hotspot and Wi-Fi simultaneously. [1] I could be wrong, but I am fairly sure these phones only have a single Wi-Fi module. [1] https://www.androidpolice.com/2018/11/03/pixel-3-3-xl-suppor...

My first thought was perhaps this could be done using 2.4 for one and 5ghz for the other, but while I was trying to find an example of configuring the radios independently, I came across DD-Wrt "Repeater Bridge" mode [1] so I don't see why that wouldn't be what the Pixel is doing.

[1] https://wiki.dd-wrt.com/wiki/index.php/Repeater_Bridge

Re: Raspberry Pi WLAN setup

#68
post #6

or create /boot/wpa_supplicant.conf and touch /boot/ssh and it will do the right thing on boot.

You have to use the “with desktop” version, I once spent a few hours fighting to get the wifi set up because i was using the “lite” version. The lite version doesn’t react to the wpa_supplicant.conf file.

I don't believe that's true in the most recent versions. I just set up a headless pi with wpa_supplicant in the boot partition of a raspbian lite image that worked well a week or so ago.

Re: Raspberry Pi WLAN setup

#69
403 for me, i’m in shanghai. but reading the comments, i think i know where you’re going with this. one question i have is, if you have a lot of devices in the same area, how do you make certain the ip address space doesnt collide?

Re: Raspberry Pi WLAN setup

#70
post #11

I'm confused by the Bluetooth logo.

There's an explanation of why bluetooth is used here: https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=223380

That thread says: "BerryLan works great on the Model 3 but not the ZeroW" Anyone know if that is still the case?
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