How to use Pinephone as wifi antenna for Pinebook Pro

[stozi]

It has been suggested to me that it is possible to use my Pinephone as a wifi antenna for my Pinebook Pro, but it doesn't work. I have default manjaro on the PBP and PmOS Phosh on the PP. In network manager on the PBP I see 'Wired Connection 1: Connected 0 B/s 0 B/s', the zeroes never change. Please help thanks!

[wibble]

That's one of those questions that sounds deceptively simple but opens a can of worms. It depends exactly what you're trying to achieve, and will probably need some manual configuration and some learning about networking. If that's your sort of thing then please provide more detail.

[stozi]

I dunno, I asked another question a while back on a related subject, and one reply was, to improve Wifi reception, just hook your PP up to your PBP by USB and put the PP in a spot with better reception. They made it sound like it would just work. I mean, if I do, the PBP does automatically register a 'wired connection', but it does seem like some setup is required because it's not actually working

[wibble]

They may just have been assuming you'd be familiar with the necessary manual configuration then. It's one of these things that's not hard when you know how, but assumes a lot of background knowledge to pick the right configuration for your needs, and to get you out of difficulty if things don't go as planned. Differences in how different distros deal with network configuration can complicate it too. If you're interested in learning then it's still an option, if not the easiest one. Other options like wifi extenders, and sticking a USB wifi dongle on the end of a USB extension lead, will probably be quicker and easier.

It sounds like in your situation you want to configure the pinephone as a bridge between its wifi and usb network connections, so that the pinebook appears on the same network as everything else on the wifi. I can't tell you exactly how to do this with PmOS, but I can give you a few pointers if you want to try.