Squeezebox Radio keeps losing wireless connection and won't reconnect - any ideas?

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  • Steevee28
    Senior Member
    • Feb 2010
    • 104

    #31
    Originally posted by bpa
    (...)
    Is Router setup to choose channel automatically (...) Can't remember if channel 13 is supported well by Radios.
    I've now set my router to some fixed channel and also disabled 802.11n at all, so it is sticking to b/g for all devices now, but that doesn't help.
    Btw, I believe that channel 13 is currently not supported.
    DHCP lease times can't be the problem either, because the Radios sometimes disconnect from my Wifi within some few seconds now :-(

    But I now looked through the kernel debug buffer of the Radios and stumbled across the message
    Code:
    eth1 (WE) : Wireless Event too big (33)
    each time right before Wifi connection is lost. Maybe that this is the root cause?
    As I can see from the most recent post of @ralphy https://forums.slimdevices.com/node/1417628, he seems to have fixed that in the new firmware build.

    Do you think that this may finally solve the problem?
    1x Squeezebox Classic, 3x Radio, 1x Touch, LMS 7.9.1 running on ODROID-U3, Ubuntu 16.04 and I'm happy with it! :)

    Comment

    • bpa
      Senior Member
      • Oct 2005
      • 22725

      #32
      Originally posted by Steevee28
      IBut I now looked through the kernel debug buffer of the Radios and stumbled across the message
      Code:
      eth1 (WE) : Wireless Event too big (33)
      each time right before Wifi connection is lost. Maybe that this is the root cause?
      As I can see from the most recent post of @ralphy https://forums.slimdevices.com/node/1417628, he seems to have fixed that in the new firmware build.

      Do you think that this may finally solve the problem?
      Maybe but it is an error message common to many Linux kernels - with a Cisco box it seem a 32 char SSID caused the message.

      Comment

      • Steevee28
        Senior Member
        • Feb 2010
        • 104

        #33
        Originally posted by bpa
        Maybe but it is an error message common to many Linux kernels - with a Cisco box it seem a 32 char SSID caused the message.
        You're right. That message seems unrelated to the connection problems.

        Some days ago, Ralphy sent me an updated wpa_supplicant/cli from his new firmware.
        After installing it to one of my Radios and playing around a lot with wpa_cli, I still unfortunately can't figure out why Wifi is disconnected this often.

        In the wpa_supplicant's log, I see
        Code:
        CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED bssid=xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx reason=3 locally_generated=1
        and that's all. After that, it refuses to reconnect.

        As Ralphy's new firmware currently doesn't have an updated Atheros ar6000 driver / binary, it is very likely that the firmware behaves the same.
        1x Squeezebox Classic, 3x Radio, 1x Touch, LMS 7.9.1 running on ODROID-U3, Ubuntu 16.04 and I'm happy with it! :)

        Comment

        • Heuer
          Senior Member
          • Nov 2005
          • 918

          #34
          My Radio has today started doing the same - constantly connecting/reconnecting to Wi-Fi. My network is pretty much state of the art (Ubiquity Security Gateway plus four AP-Lite access points all on separate fixed channels). I have moved the Radio around the house and to an outbuilding with its own AP. Tried Factory reset to no avail. We have three SB3's, two Boom's and a Transporter all running wirelessly at high bit rates. According to my Unifi Controller:


          Any thoughts?
          Lounge: Transporter>Audio Synthesis DAX Decade>Audio Research LS22>Krell FPB300>Wilson Benesch Act 1's + 2 x Velodyne SPL1000 sub's
          Kitchen: Touch>Topping DAC>Arcam Solo>Anthony Gallo Micro's+Sub, Joggler controller
          Office: DAC32>Acoustic Energy AE1 Active's, Joggler controller
          Garage: Boom>QAcoustics 7000s subwoofer
          Bedroom: Radio
          Shed: Radio
          Workshop: Boom
          Garden 1: SB3>JVC amp>Rock outdoor speakers
          Garden 2: SB3>JVC amp>Rock outdoor speakers

          Comment

          • Steevee28
            Senior Member
            • Feb 2010
            • 104

            #35
            Originally posted by Heuer
            Any thoughts?
            Can you find out whether some of your neighbors started using some new Wifi devices / routers?
            1x Squeezebox Classic, 3x Radio, 1x Touch, LMS 7.9.1 running on ODROID-U3, Ubuntu 16.04 and I'm happy with it! :)

            Comment

            • Heuer
              Senior Member
              • Nov 2005
              • 918

              #36
              Update: I seem to have solved the problem!

              I had started an instance of LMS8 on a second PC on the network and that seems to cause the problem. Stopping one of the LMS servers restores the radio to normality. It looks like the Radio was trying to connect to both servers but could not decide which one. I can replicate the problem by starting a second LMS8. Not sure whether it is down to V8 or a confused Radio but it does not affect the SB3's or the Boom's. The Wi-Fi icon keeps switching from white to red when both LMS's are active.
              Last edited by Heuer; 2020-04-24, 13:42.
              Lounge: Transporter>Audio Synthesis DAX Decade>Audio Research LS22>Krell FPB300>Wilson Benesch Act 1's + 2 x Velodyne SPL1000 sub's
              Kitchen: Touch>Topping DAC>Arcam Solo>Anthony Gallo Micro's+Sub, Joggler controller
              Office: DAC32>Acoustic Energy AE1 Active's, Joggler controller
              Garage: Boom>QAcoustics 7000s subwoofer
              Bedroom: Radio
              Shed: Radio
              Workshop: Boom
              Garden 1: SB3>JVC amp>Rock outdoor speakers
              Garden 2: SB3>JVC amp>Rock outdoor speakers

              Comment

              • Heuer
                Senior Member
                • Nov 2005
                • 918

                #37
                Originally posted by Steevee28
                Can you find out whether some of your neighbors started using some new Wifi devices / routers?
                This is what the Wi-Fi landscape looks like around us. As you can see there is hardly any interference other than on Channel 4 which I do not use. The Radio is on the 'Bedroom' AP.

                Lounge: Transporter>Audio Synthesis DAX Decade>Audio Research LS22>Krell FPB300>Wilson Benesch Act 1's + 2 x Velodyne SPL1000 sub's
                Kitchen: Touch>Topping DAC>Arcam Solo>Anthony Gallo Micro's+Sub, Joggler controller
                Office: DAC32>Acoustic Energy AE1 Active's, Joggler controller
                Garage: Boom>QAcoustics 7000s subwoofer
                Bedroom: Radio
                Shed: Radio
                Workshop: Boom
                Garden 1: SB3>JVC amp>Rock outdoor speakers
                Garden 2: SB3>JVC amp>Rock outdoor speakers

                Comment

                • omnium21
                  Junior Member
                  • Jun 2020
                  • 25

                  #38
                  Continuing WiFi problems

                  I've started to debug my Squeezebox Radios because like many others, my WiFi has been constantly disconnecting. As I have 2 x Radios, I can compare symptoms.

                  One constant mentioned in many of the threads is interference and possible misconfiguration of the network the Radio is connected to. So I wanted to eliminate as many problems as possible.

                  I'm pretty sure at this point that my own network is fine, and that I'm suffering from interference from other networks. There are 16 x 2.4GHz access points visible here. I believe one of them is a Sky mesh network that sounds pretty intrusive. All of these networks are on channels 1, 6, or 11, but I assume they can/will channel hop. I've tried configuring my network to disable auto-channel and use a different channel. And that hasn't helped at all. Whatever the interference is doing to the Radio, it's pretty severely messing it, because I haven't found a graceful way to recover.

                  I thought I'd try building a Faraday cage around my Radio and access point, so there was definitely no interference. Well, I didn't quite succeed with the various methods I tried. In the end, I have 1 Radio wrapped in about a dozen layers of aluminium foil. And it still gets a strong signal from my WiFi network. Weird. The positive step is that it only sees one other access point during a scan, and even then, not all the time.

                  The Faraday Radio has been up and connected to the Wifi for 30 hours right now with no issues. The non-Faraday radio can't keep a connection up for more than 20 minutes. Occasionally it will last longer.

                  I've connected to the serial port and from wpa_cli, and after the network has dropped, everything looks like it might be working, except, I only see one access point - the one it was previously connected to. The other 16 APs are not shown in the scan once the network has dropped, but they are there normally.

                  From the commandline, I've tried restarting wpa_supplicant, I've upgraded wap_supplicant (and wpa_cli) to a newer version (v2.9) as per another thread:


                  I've found that this sequence is the only way I can get the WiFi to reconnect without rebooting the device:


                  /etc/init.d/wlan stop
                  /etc/init.d/wlan start
                  udhcpc -R -a -p /var/run/udhcpc.eth1.pid -b --syslog -i eth1 -H SqueezeboxRadio -s /etc/network/udhcpc_action


                  There are probably better ways to restart it, but the main thing is, by manually repeating the steps in /etc/init.d/wlan, unless I unload and reload the Atheros firmware, there is no way I can reconnect the WiFi. There are many tricks I won't have tried, of course. I'm no WPA expert. ANd I haven't even touched on wmiconfig.

                  So even if I can work out an automated way to reload the firmware every time the WiFi signal dies, I don't think it's a viable solution whilst listening to music.

                  I've googled around the Atheros AR6002, I can see there's a copy of the firmware on kernel.org:



                  $ ll AR6002
                  total 112K
                  -rw-rw-r-- 1 ryan ryan 97K Sep 26 2017 athwlan.bin.z77
                  -rw-rw-r-- 1 ryan ryan 1.4K Sep 26 2017 data.patch.hw2_0.bin
                  -rw-rw-r-- 1 ryan ryan 784 Sep 26 2017 eeprom.bin
                  -rw-rw-r-- 1 ryan ryan 48 Sep 26 2017 eeprom.data


                  What is a z77 file? Some sort of compression? It's not recognised by 7zip, at least.

                  But it looks quite different from what I see in /lib/atheros:


                  # ls -al /lib/atheros/
                  -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 150911 Jan 1 1970 ar6000.ko
                  -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 177073 Jan 1 1970 athwlan.bin
                  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 15279 Jan 1 1970 bmiloader
                  -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 768 Jan 1 1970 calData_ar6102_15dBm.bin
                  -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 836 Jan 1 1970 data.patch.hw2_0.bin
                  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 19454 Jan 1 1970 eeprom.AR6002
                  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 12312 Jan 1 1970 loadAR6000l.sh
                  -rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 110242 Jan 1 1970 wmiconfig


                  I'm tempted to give it try anyway, but I'm not hopeful it'll even load, never mind work.

                  I anyone has any more detailed knowledge about all this stuff, I'd be interested to hear if there's a way out of this hole.

                  Comment

                  • ralphy
                    Senior Member
                    • Jan 2006
                    • 3260

                    #39
                    The .z77 extension is the athwlan firmware in compressed format that bmiloader can uncompress at load time.

                    Code:
                    loadAR6000l.sh:            # If a compressed version of the WLAN application exists, use it
                    loadAR6000l.sh:            $IMAGEPATH/bmiloader -i $NETIF --write --address=$LOADADDR --file=$wlanapp.z77 --uncompress
                    I'd be wary of loading that firmware in the radio.
                    Ralphy

                    1-Touch, 5-Classics, 3-Booms, 2-UE Radio
                    Squeezebox client builds donations always appreciated.

                    Comment

                    • Heuer
                      Senior Member
                      • Nov 2005
                      • 918

                      #40
                      Do you know what channel the Faraday Radio is on, and what channel the native Radio is on? I have had problems with my Radio and Boom dropping WiFi when connected to Channel 6; C1 and C11 cause no problem. force your AP/Router to use either 1 or 11 and try again.
                      Lounge: Transporter>Audio Synthesis DAX Decade>Audio Research LS22>Krell FPB300>Wilson Benesch Act 1's + 2 x Velodyne SPL1000 sub's
                      Kitchen: Touch>Topping DAC>Arcam Solo>Anthony Gallo Micro's+Sub, Joggler controller
                      Office: DAC32>Acoustic Energy AE1 Active's, Joggler controller
                      Garage: Boom>QAcoustics 7000s subwoofer
                      Bedroom: Radio
                      Shed: Radio
                      Workshop: Boom
                      Garden 1: SB3>JVC amp>Rock outdoor speakers
                      Garden 2: SB3>JVC amp>Rock outdoor speakers

                      Comment

                      • omnium21
                        Junior Member
                        • Jun 2020
                        • 25

                        #41
                        I have a more stable connection by limiting Channel Bandwidth

                        Originally posted by Heuer
                        Do you know what channel the Faraday Radio is on, and what channel the native Radio is on? I have had problems with my Radio and Boom dropping WiFi when connected to Channel 6; C1 and C11 cause no problem. force your AP/Router to use either 1 or 11 and try again.
                        I've been playing with this some more and I've managed to stabilise my Radios for a few hours at a time now.

                        Both of them were on the same channel, because they were connected to the same WiFi SSID which was using a fixed channel. I hadn't tried *every* channel previously, which was a mistake that I've rectified now. First, I wanted to make sure *my* WiFi network and Radio connection was stable when no interference was present, which I confirmed.

                        No matter which channel I chose, the Radio would only stay connected for a short period of time. Channels 1, 6, and 11 were almost impossible to maintain a connect for a few minutes. Other channels would last about 20 mins to an hour.

                        In addition to disabling "auto channel" (which always uses Channel 6 on my AP) there's an additional setting: "Channel Bandwidth" that I'd ignored previously. My AP defaults to "Auto + Ch X", where X varies depending on which fixed channel id being used. If I change that setting to "20 MHz", the connection stabilises for long periods of time. I suspect the Auto + Ch X means that it isn't actually using a fixed channel after all.

                        Either way, once the network goes down, the Radio must still be rebooted, or hacked via the serial port to reload the Atheros blob.

                        Comment

                        • omnium21
                          Junior Member
                          • Jun 2020
                          • 25

                          #42
                          Originally posted by ralphy
                          The .z77 extension is the athwlan firmware in compressed format that bmiloader can uncompress at load time.

                          Code:
                          loadAR6000l.sh:            # If a compressed version of the WLAN application exists, use it
                          loadAR6000l.sh:            $IMAGEPATH/bmiloader -i $NETIF --write --address=$LOADADDR --file=$wlanapp.z77 --uncompress
                          Thanks for the explanation. I'd guessed it was compression, but wondered if I needed to uncompress it, or if the loader would take care of it.

                          Originally posted by ralphy
                          I'd be wary of loading that firmware in the radio.
                          I was feeling a bit more gung ho than you, saying as I figured my Radio was a brick anyway. So I gave it a shot, and it didn't even load, funny enough. I also tried another similar Atheros firmware I found on a Kindle hacking website that someone had extracted from their Kindle. It was also a .z77 file. And it also wouldn't load.

                          Comment

                          • Tony T
                            Senior Member
                            • Nov 2009
                            • 1469

                            #43
                            After years of no problems, since last week my 4 SB Radio’s keep disconnecting from my network. I also have a SB Touch, and that never gets dropped from my Network.
                            I’m using Google WiFi, and thought that their recent s/w update was the problem, but tried an eero and same problem.
                            I had my LMS on a Mac-mini, and thought that may be the problem. I’ve been wanting to move to a pCP, so did, same problem
                            Only a re-boot reconnects.

                            Interference from neighbors, as suggested here might be the problem.

                            Another thought —. Since pCP can be configured as a WAP, and has channel selection, is this a possible fix, or would the fact that the pCP would still be connected to the Google WiFi still cause issues.

                            I don’t mind trying a new router, but which one?
                            Tony
                             SBTouch ♪ SBRadio ♬

                            Comment

                            • omnium21
                              Junior Member
                              • Jun 2020
                              • 25

                              #44
                              Originally posted by Tony T
                              Another thought —. Since pCP can be configured as a WAP, and has channel selection, is this a possible fix, or would the fact that the pCP would still be connected to the Google WiFi still cause issues.
                              Yes, setting up a WAP with a fixed channel - and not using channels 1, 6, or 11 - might solve your problems. It seems to be the most successful solution. I found it wasn't enough for me, I had to change the "Channel Bandwidth" to limit it to the minimum value of 20MHz. Many WAPs don't have this setting and I've read they can often default to 20MHz anyway, so if you don't have a Channel Bandwidth setting, or something named similar, it may not be a problem for you.

                              Originally posted by Tony T
                              I don’t mind trying a new router, but which one?
                              The problem is the WiFi software on the Radio, so I don't expect a new router will help at all.

                              The other solution is to buy a modern WiFi to Ethernet adapter (that copes with the interference) and bypass the Radio's WiFi completely. But this setup wasn't practical for one of my Radios.

                              Comment

                              • Tony T
                                Senior Member
                                • Nov 2009
                                • 1469

                                #45
                                Originally posted by omnium21
                                In addition to disabling "auto channel" (which always uses Channel 6 on my AP) there's an additional setting: "Channel Bandwidth" that I'd ignored previously. My AP defaults to "Auto + Ch X", where X varies depending on which fixed channel id being used. If I change that setting to "20 MHz", the connection stabilises for long periods of time. I suspect the Auto + Ch X means that it isn't actually using a fixed channel after all.
                                Just got an Asus to replace my Google WiFi after my SB Radios started losing network connection.
                                The Asus give greater control, so time to "play"

                                Setting a fixed channel (that I verified was not being used by neighbors) didn't help.
                                Radios still disconnected after about an hr.

                                Looked into what "Channel Bandwidth" means, and yes, 20mhz is best for a 2GHz band as it only uses 1 channel (40mhz bonds 2 channels). But, not sure if the Asus was using 20 or 40 in 20/40 setting. We'll see if locking in at 20mhz works.
                                Getting bandwidth right isn’t always straightforward. With multiple standards and a variety of tradeoffs, it can be hard to keep up with best practices. We answer the question of when to use 20, 40, or 80 mhz when it comes to optimizing your Wi-Fi.


                                (I am not optimistic)

                                Edit: Fixing Bandwith to 20mhz did't help, WiFi still drops.
                                Last edited by Tony T; 2020-07-08, 17:17.
                                Tony
                                 SBTouch ♪ SBRadio ♬

                                Comment

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