WiFi on Armbian problem

[scalextrix]

I was on Debian Stretch, but the WiFi went wrong so Im trying different OS's, Im now on Armbian because it seems to have good tools for wifi like nmtui.

I have the official USB wifi from the Pine website, its the Realtek one.

Which chipset/device, as there is 2 on the store.

Its the RTL8188EU model

That one should work just fine, the other needs a driver installing.

Did you try nmtui and going through the text interface rather than the command line?

I managed to get the WifI working by using a different adapter.  Its worked for days without fault and now its all gone horribly wrong again.  I think the ROCK64 shoudl not be advertised as being able to have WiFi, its just too unstable.

[Rocklobster]

I'm running the Rock64 24/7 on the Armbian Distro for the last 4 months via wifi and not a single issue with it. It's either a) your particular Distro, b) your wifi adapter and the driver version you're using or possibly c) how your connection between your router and your wifi is being handled. Have you Ethernet as well as wifi connected to your Rock64. If so try disconnecting the Ethernet.

How close is your Rock64 located to your router. Is there anything else in you LAN that might be causing conflict. Have you tried using a different channel on your router. Maybe a conflict from your neighbour.

Plenty to check outside of your Rock64 so might be worth going this route.

[scalextrix]

I'm running the Rock64 24/7 on the Armbian Distro for the last 4 months via wifi and not a single issue with it. It's either a) your particular Distro, b) your wifi adapter and the driver version you're using or possibly c) how your connection between your router and your wifi is being handled. Have you Ethernet as well as wifi connected to your Rock64. If so try disconnecting the Ethernet.

How close is your Rock64 located to your router. Is there anything else in you LAN that might be causing conflict. Have you tried using a different channel on your router. Maybe a conflict from your neighbour.

Plenty to check outside of your Rock64 so might be worth going this route.

Thanks for the response.

I'm pretty certain it's a driver issue, I live in a fairly unpopulated place, I have 3 raspberry pis setup and using WiFi dongles which are working seamlessly, plus plenty if other kit.
I can swap adapter around and the Pis always work, the Rock64 though will not reliably work, it's been difficult since day one which was in Debian Jessie, but I got the adapter working.  I'd upgraded to Stretch and a while after out of the blue the Wi-Fi stopped working.
I've tried Armbian, Debian minimal 64bit, Ubuntu minimal, Ubuntu LXDE in the last days and none work with the Pine64 WiFi adapter.  I tried swapping out the adapters from the Pis and thought I'd found one that worked, but now that is misbehaving too.
All the adapters see my network SSID so drivers are loading, but when you enter credentials in nmtui they just refuse to connect; this only happens in the Rock64, all other devices connect to my network faultlessly.  The pine64 wifi adapter is currently rock solid on my PiZero, wont work on the Rock64 though.

EDIT: To ensure I wasnt going crazy I reflashed the SD card with Ubuntu Desktop, swapped the original Pine64 WiFi adapter back in. Well it got an IP address and I could do an update, after restarting, it couldnr get an IP address, then it lost the SSID, it added a new SSID_1 which also didnt work. I deleted all the networks in nmtui, restarted and it found an IP address, but its so slow I cant even do an update. And then it ceases to work altogether again. Swap the adaper pack to PiZero, works perfectly with no setup...

[Rocklobster]

Sounds like something is grabbing your Rock64 wifi connection. Have you tried disconnecting all other wifi connections and just connecting the Rock64 via wifi. Does your router support 2.4ghz and 5ghz. If so disable the 5ghz option.

[scalextrix]

I've just figured out a way to get the Rock64 hard wired to my router, it now works well and has been stable for days, I can SSH I without issues or delays, the other USB devices are working properly too, which was another issue apparently being caused by using a Wi-Fi adapter.