Net over USB and ConnMan problems

Mark7 · December 11, 2016, 3:18pm

Hello –

Brand new BBB Wireless, factory image.

Two situations I am puzzling over, perhaps folks might help with solutions.

Net over USB - Following typical steps for hooking up new board, cannot get connected past host laptop over USB. Shared connxn and obtain auto IP for Linux gadget on Win7, check. Shell in and add default gateway ..7.1 to route traffic through host, check. Echo nameservers into resolv.conf, check. Ping the host machine, check. Ping 8.8.8.8 - FAIL. Ping Google - FAIL (unknown host). Hmmm, and I just went through these steps on a Wheezy board few weeks ago no problems. Any suggestions on what I might be missing?
ConnMan - Which is new to me, previous experience being with wicd. Get into connmanctl, then enable wifi, and receive following --“Error wifi: Method “SetProperty” with signature “sv” on interface “net.connman.Technology” doesn’t exist” Read some man pages, nothing jumps out at me, power down the board. Plug in a UWN200 (Ralink) wifi dongle, powerup the board. Get into connmanctl, enable, scan, services, agent on, connect, quit…no problem. Unplug the dongle, power up, and no joy. At the prompt, I expected typing in technologies would show me something (below), but, I am kinda stumped. Its the error above I could not find good sources for resolution. Any assistance will be appreciated.

##Trying to connect via onboard 1835

technologies

/net/connman/technology/ethernet
Name = Wired
Type = ethernet
Powered = True
Connected = False
Tethering = False

##When connected via USB dongle UWN200

technologies
/net/connman/technology/wifi
Name = WiFi
Type = wifi
Powered = True
Connected = True
Tethering = False
TetheringIdentifier = BeagleBone-06A5
TetheringPassphrase = BeagleBone
/net/connman/technology/ethernet
Name = Wired
Type = ethernet
Powered = True
Connected = False
Tethering = False

Thank you

RobertCNelson · December 11, 2016, 5:08pm

Hi Mark,

Hello --

Brand new BBB Wireless, factory image.

Two situations I am puzzling over, perhaps folks might help with solutions.

1. Net over USB - Following typical steps for hooking up new board, cannot
get connected past host laptop over USB. Shared connxn and obtain auto IP
for Linux gadget on Win7, check. Shell in and add default gateway *.*.7.1 to
route traffic through host, check. Echo nameservers into resolv.conf, check.
Ping the host machine, check. Ping 8.8.8.8 - FAIL. Ping Google - FAIL
(unknown host). Hmmm, and I just went through these steps on a Wheezy board
few weeks ago no problems. Any suggestions on what I might be missing?

2. ConnMan - Which is new to me, previous experience being with wicd. Get
into connmanctl, then enable wifi, and receive following --"Error wifi:
Method "SetProperty" with signature "sv" on interface
"net.connman.Technology" doesn't exist" Read some man pages, nothing jumps
out at me, power down the board. Plug in a UWN200 (Ralink) wifi dongle,
powerup the board. Get into connmanctl, enable, scan, services, agent on,
connect, quit...no problem. Unplug the dongle, power up, and no joy. At the
prompt, I expected typing in technologies would show me something (below),
but, I am kinda stumped. Its the error above I could not find good sources
for resolution. Any assistance will be appreciated.

##Trying to connect via onboard 1835
> technologies
/net/connman/technology/ethernet
  Name = Wired
  Type = ethernet
  Powered = True
  Connected = False
  Tethering = False

##When connected via USB dongle UWN200
> technologies
/net/connman/technology/wifi
  Name = WiFi
  Type = wifi
  Powered = True
  Connected = True
  Tethering = False
  TetheringIdentifier = BeagleBone-06A5
  TetheringPassphrase = BeagleBone
/net/connman/technology/ethernet
  Name = Wired
  Type = ethernet
  Powered = True
  Connected = False
  Tethering = False

Grab the latest image from:

http://beagleboard.org/latest-images

On the bbgw with the factory image, one of the pin's on the wl1835 is
in the wrong mode on startup, which causes the wl1835 to be in test
mode, so wifi is un-reliable..

iot image: the wl1835 is in tether mode, so use this:

#connmanctl
#connmanctl> tether wifi disable
#connmanctl> enable wifi
#connmanctl> scan wifi
#connmanctl> services
#connmanctl> agent on
#connmanctl> connect wifi_*_managed_psk
#connmanctl> quit

with the "seeed-iot" image wl1835 is controlled by wifidog (web
portal), it's the only addon from the normal 'iot' image..

Regards,

Mark7 · December 11, 2016, 11:05pm

Hello Robert, and thank you for your response.

I pulled up the url http://beagleboard.org/latest-images. Downloaded a couple, wrote image to a uSD and booted up. Am frustrated by lack of success, and knowledge in these matters. Here is what I got…

Got the image “Jessie for BeagleBone via microSD card – Debian 8.6 2016-11-06 4GB SD LXQT” I could shell in, but still could not get out past the host computer as described in original post. Connman threw same error as described in original post.
Grabbed the image “Jessie IoT (non-GUI) for BeagleBone via microSD card – Debian 8.6 2016-12-09 4GB SD IoT” under Alternate images. With this, could not pull up 192.168.7.2 in web browser, nor shell in via PuTTY, timeouts on both.

I have not gotten to the Seeed IOT image yet. But the above travails seem very odd, at this point.

Sincerely,
Mark

Richard1 · December 20, 2016, 9:24pm

I tried the cure –
downloaded Debian 8.6 2016-11-06 4GB SD LXQT and installed it in eMMC.
It works so far –
i.e., after convincing Win7 to share through the 192.168.7.1 gateway and setting up nameservers and ntp,
*) I can access the BBBW through its USB, its RS-232, and its WiFi ports, all at the same time,
*) I can ping 8.8.8.8 and www.google.com, and
*) the time is correct.

What I would like to do now is get rid of the 192.168.7.1 gateway and go directly to the 192.168.1.1 that all my other computers use. As far as I can tell, this means that the BBB WiFi subnet should not have IP addresses 192.168.8.x but 192.168.1.x. But I cannot for the life of me figure out where the 192.168.8.x addresses come from. Are they assigned by some DHCP server? Not one of my existing ones, for sure. The closest I can come is
/opt/scripts/tools/developers/nfs-rsynch.sh
but I don’t know if that’s really involved nor what I should do to it. And if I did do something, how I would invoke it without restarting the BBBW (and chance losing connectivity altogether).

[Aside: I found file above using
find / -name ‘*.sh’ -exec grep -H ‘192.168.0.’ ‘{}’ ;
which I tried for *.sh and *.conf and *.xml – with various interesting results.]

** So here’s my question:** How to make the WiFi on the BBBW have a static address, e.g. 192.168.1.88, every time it starts, so I can have it provide a web page to the outside world (using Port Forwarding on my router).

Many thanks for the posts so far and for any further help.
Richard

RobertCNelson · December 20, 2016, 9:42pm

So we have a document somewhere, the default subnet's are setup as:

192.168.7.x - usb0
192.168.8.x - wlan0

to take full control of wlan0, and do what you want, do this:

sudo apt-get update ; sudo apt-get install bb-wl18xx-firmware

Then run: (i just added the TETHER_ENABLED kill option a few days ago)

sudo sed -i -e 's:TETHER_ENABLED=yes:TETHER_ENABLED=no:g' /etc/default/bb-wl18xx

sudo connmanctl tether wifi off || true

Now you have full control of wlan0 and stick in on any subnet..

Regards,

Richard1 · December 20, 2016, 9:52pm

My bad…I wrote 192.168.8.x when I should have written 192.168.0.x
I have one BBGW, which does use .8., but I’ve stopped using it altogether since I got some BBBWs, and it’s about those that I was writing.

Two questions:

Does your suggestion apply to the BBBW? If so, I’ll do it!
What is tethering, anyway? I’ve tethered my laptop to my cellphone on occasion, but I don’t understand what it has to do with the WiFi setup. Where can I look for a clear explanation?

Thanks for your very fast reply.
Richard

RobertCNelson · December 20, 2016, 10:01pm

My bad...I wrote 192.168.8.x when I should have written 192.168.0.x

it's 192.168.8.x when dnsmasq is in control, and 192.168.1.x when
connman is controlling tethering.

I have one BBGW, which does use .8., but I've stopped using it altogether
since I got some BBBWs, and it's about those that I was writing.

Two questions:
1) Does your suggestion apply to the BBBW? If so, I'll do it!

yes, it does..

2) What is tethering, anyway? I've tethered my laptop to my cellphone on
occasion, but I don't understand what it has to do with the WiFi setup.
Where can I look for a clear explanation?

tethering is just the term connman uses for bridging/sharing a connection..

So out of the box on the bbgw/bbbw, the goal right now is to have a
usable access point.

Images before 2016-12-18 (1) and after 2016-11-06 (2), are setup in
Wireless AP mode using connman.

This works great, if you just connect a bunch of devices to the
bbgw/bbbw (and a usb ethernet device), BUT not so great if you don't
have a usb/eth dongle.

For the past couple of weeks, we've been testing/hacking on a dual
connection option. So when we don't detect a usb/eth0 device, you can
ssh into the bbgw/bbbw over the "BeagleBone-wxzy" interface, and then
(while still connected), use connman on wlan0 and connect it to a
second AP, (while still ssh'ed into the first connection)..

1: http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack_Debian#Debian_Image_Testing_Snapshots
2: https://beagleboard.org/latest-images

Regards,