[Announce] Community Firmware for Squeezebox Radio/Touch/Controller and LMS 8

[dzenc]

This radio has now been playing or in standby for 8 days 18 hrs with no disconnects in the 'problem location'.

So either the cause of the WiFi issues has gone (although I think all my neighbours and their routers are still around )

or this driver/firmware combination, at least in my case, has done some good.

Am going to revert back to the most recent 'Community Firmware' release (Version 8.0.1 r16916 - Feb 10 2023) and see if the disconnect problem returns.

Wow! That’s great news. Thanks for the update.

[dzenc]

I am testing a new build. Like the v1 build I previously released, it has the new driver with the old firmware, and the power mode is set to ‘rec’ (which I presume means recommended). In addition, the build I am now testing has signal strength reporting fixed, 802.11b disabled (802.11g only) and, as a final fallback, will reset the wifi stack if it detects that the ARP cache is empty, indicating that network activity has stopped. This combo has been very stable for me. I will give it a bit more testing and if things look good, I will release it.

[staresy]

I came to a similar conclusion and have been trialling v1 FW with the WIFI g only mode. So far so good.

I look forward to giving your next release a whirl.

Thanks for your efforts.

[dzenc]

EDIT: Build pulled because users are reporting problems.

[staresy]

Sadly testv9 is very unstable for me, regularly drops WIFI, red icon, only lasts minutes,

Logs attached (had to ssh in via ethernet, not possible over WIFI). Also, the ethernet icon is alternating between a white double ended arrow and a blue icon which looks a bit like a cloud, not sure if that's relevant.

Radio Files 4.zip

[slartibartfast]

I still have the latest community firmware installed on my Radio and don't suffer from the Wifi 6 issue. This morning I noticed my Radio was showing the red WiFi icon and try to reconnect using Networking settings didn't work. After rebooting I had to reconnect via Networking presumably because I had previously tried and failed. This is the first time this has happened for a very long time and just adds another data point showing that the original firmware isn't immune from dropping WiFi at random intervals.

[dzenc]

Sadly testv9 is very unstable for me, regularly drops WIFI, red icon, only lasts minutes,

Logs attached (had to ssh in via ethernet, not possible over WIFI). Also, the ethernet icon is alternating between a white double ended arrow and a blue icon which looks a bit like a cloud, not sure if that's relevant.

[ATTACH]n1641016[/ATTACH]

Wow. Looking at your logs, I can see how bad it's behaving. Can you please try doing Settings/Advanced/Restore Factory Settings first and then re-installing the testv9 firmware? If it happens again, can you please also get the output of running "ps aux"

[staresy]

I've factory reset, loaded testv9 and set it running.

Initial observation is the WIFI signal level is low (1 bar, approx 30%), compared with a usual value of around 80% for this SBR/location.

Anyway, I'll keep an eye on it and report back.

[dzenc]

Thanks

[dzenc]

staresy - Do you have multiple access points on the same network/ssid ? Or just a single wifi router?

[staresy]

I have x3 APs all on same SSID.

v9 is still failing for me, will send over the logs later.

[dzenc]

Ok thanks.

[zordaz]

The testv1 build has been stable here on three SB Radio's for a week now. Wlanpoke removed where present, no factory reset. I guess it's better not to install v9 yet?

[dzenc]

The testv1 build has been stable here on three SB Radio's for a week now. Wlanpoke removed where present, no factory reset. I guess it's better not to install v9 yet?

Well that's good news. From staresy 's first logs I can see that the driver is saying that it's not "losing" connections but instead being commanded to disconnect. Commanded by what? I would suspect wpa_supplicant, but I can't say for certain. My *guess* is that this is some broken interaction between the new driver and wpa_supplicant with respect to handling multiple access points. (I have not tested against multiple access points on the same SSID.) The interesting question is, why did it work in v1?

To answer your question zordaz - if you have multiple access points on the same ssid, maybe hold off. If you have a single wifi router, maybe give it a try?

[carpelux]

I would also like to chime in. I have been running v1 on three radios without any interuptions for 8 days. Previously it disconnected every few hours, with wlanpoke active it could work a few days but with v1 it has been stable even with wlanpoke removed.
I then tried v9 on one radio and I couldn't even connect to WiFi. Searching for wlans on the radio did show me the SSID i expected to see, but it was impossible to connect. I'm running 3 cisco ap's distributed arund the house. One is very close to the radio I was testing on but the signal strength showed up as lowest possible. Even after a factory reset the result was the same, so I went back to v1 on that radio.
Lastly, a very big thanks dzenc for Your work to resolve this longstanding issue!