No WIFI on error screen

Using Zynthian
1

Heey there! First of all, thank you for this amazing product. I would like to report the following issue with losing WIFI on the error screen. I am using Zynthian 5.1

I built a Zynthian on a raspberry pi 4B without the official hardware, and had previously setup WIFI when starting the Zynthian for the first time. After changing the Audio device to “Generic USB Device”, Zynthian booted up into the eror screen. However, the webconf and SSH was unreachable as the wifi configuration is lost.

After plugging in ethernet I was able to access the machine and look around and reconfigure the device. I was curious about the WIFI problem and found the following failure paths:

NO ETHERNET CABLE PLUGGED AT POWERING ON OR REBOOT → NO WIFI

  • WIFI does not seem to work at all when starting the machine with the wrong audio device plugged in or no audio device, and no ethernet cable plugged in. The listed IP (192.168.69.1) is unreachable.
  • If you then plug in an ethernet cable, the error screen will show the eth0 ip address after a few seconds. And zynthian.local will also be reachable. SSH also works over that IP.
  • Inspecting the wifi configuration via webconf shows that the Zynthian has an incorrect SSSD, " zynthian-ap" with IP 192.168.69.1, despite having configured it the correct hotspot earlier.
  • Incorrect wifi configuration persists through reboots.

ETHERNET CABLE PLUGGED IN WHEN POWERING ON → WIFI

  • If you have the ethernet cable plugged in while powering on the Zynthian (not rebooting), it will then also start with WIFI enabled (though not always). Error screen will show the eth0 ip.
  • Wifi configuration has correct SSSD, and it is possible to connect to webconf and ssh to the Zynthian with its wlan0 ipaddress.
  • If you unplug the ethernet cable and reboot it, it will lose WIFI when it starts up again.
  • If you unplug the ethernet cable and reboot the UI into debug mode (UI LOG → Show Debug Logging), it will restart with WIFI enabled.

DAE have this issue? For the sake of easy troubleshooting it might be useful if we could configure WIFI or the USB device from the error screen. Or have WIFI working more reliably. I can imagine musicians needing to reconfigure their device on guest wifi where there is no ethernet connection or on a mobile hotspot…

2

Zynthian runs a wifi hotspot which you should be able to connect to (zynthian-ap) Not sure about the conditions for the hotspot to run if theres an error though. Maybe it’s being a bit aggressive.

The wired stuff you mentioned is all as designed though.

3

Aaah, I did not know that… Thx for the explanation.

Interesting, so connecting to the zynthian hotspot I am able to ssh into the device. However zynthian.local does not work. Curling “zynthian.local” gives “connection refused”. Is the webconf supposed to be accessible when connected on the Zynthian hotspot?

I think it is a bit mystifying under which conditions it will connect to the preconfigured wifi, or use its own hotspot.

Edit:
Are there any plans to improve the error condition and its handling of WIFI/hotspot/configuration option? I might look into this myself when I have time.

Edit:
Found the issue tracker, will open a bug report there. It seems like the hotspot is started even though WIFi has been configured and should be available.

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4

Depends a lot on your os and how well it deals with mDNS. Spoilers: old versions of windows are a bit shit.

5

Note that it says “Connection Refused”, not “Unknown Host”, or something like that. It seems that the mDNS worked…

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