Wifi on Beaglebone Black

[rsfairman]

I'm trying to set up a USB adapter for wifi on a Beaglebone Black, but having no success.

Supposedly, the ground plane for the HDMI port can interfere with the wifi signal, so the adapter is on a cable a couple of feet from the BBB, and the router is five or six feet away (i.e., signal strength should be good). Also, the wifi adapter is plugged into a powered USB hub, so drawing too much current through the BBB should not be an issue. I'm running debian 8.7 (jessie). I am also using a 4D Systems touchscreen, and there's a USB mouse and keyboard attached, but I don't think that should be a factor. Bearing in mind that I am (somewhat) blindly attempting to follow various bits and pieces of advice found with google, here is what I've done.

lsusb shows the adapter:

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Bus 001 Device 006: ID 7392:7811 Edimax Technology Co., Ltd EW-7811Un 802.11n Wireless Adapter [Realtek RTL8188CUS]

So, this is the Edimax ew7811un, also known as the N150. Aside: I think this is very commonly used with the Raspberry Pi.

Below are some commands, and their output

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root@beaglebone:/home/debian# iw dev
phy#0
        Interface wlan0
            ifindex 4
	    wdev 0x1
	    addr 74:da:38:8c:1c:e4
	    type managed
root@beaglebone:/home/debian# ip a
1: lo: <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 65536 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN group default qlen 1
    link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00
    inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo
      valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
    inet6 ::1/128 scope host
      valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
2: eth0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,DYNAMIC,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether b0:d5:cc:10:5a:71 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
3: usb0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc pfifo_fast state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether b0:d5:cc:10:5a:73 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff
    inet 192.168.7.2/30 brd 192.168.7.3 scope global usb0
      valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever
4: wlan0: <NO-CARRIER,BROADCAST,MULTICAST,DYNAMIC,UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state DOWN group default qlen 1000
    link/ether 74:da:38:8c:1c:e4 brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff

You can see that 'ip a' reports an interface on usb0, which seems odd. I would have expected wlan0 to be the only item. Next, I did:

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root@beaglebone:/home/debian# wpa_passphrase NETGEAR39 [my pwd] > /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
root@beaglebone:/home/debian# ip link set wlan0 up
root@beaglebone:/home/debian# iw wlan0 link
Not connected.
root@beaglebone:/home/debian# iw wlan0 scan
root@beaglebone:/home/debian# wpa_supplicant -B -D wext -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: Invalid argument
ioctl[SIOCSIWENCODEEXT]: Invalid argument
root@beaglebone:/home/debian# iw wlan0 scan

Shouldn't the 'scan' list info about detected networks? I get nothing, although yesterday I think it did report the presence of the 'NETGEAR39' network. The network is there, since other stuff can get on.

That didn't work, so I thought I would try wpa_cli:

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root@beaglebone:/home/debian# wpa_cli
wpa_cli v2.5
Copyright (c) 2004-2015, Jouni Malinen <j@w1.fi> and contributors

This software may be distributed under the terms of the BSD license.
See README for more details.

Selected interface 'wlan0'

Interactive mode

<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-STARTED
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS
> scan
OK
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-STARTED
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS
<3>CTRL-EVENT-NETWORK-NOT-FOUND
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-STARTED
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-STARTED
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS
> scan_results
bssid / frequency / signal level / flags / ssid
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-STARTED
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-STARTED
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-STARTED
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-STARTED
<3>CTRL-EVENT-SCAN-RESULTS

The scan/scan-result reports nothing. I'm not sure what is going on.

[bw123]

I never heard of beaglebone black, but it sounds cool! Did you follow the wiki for the device?

https://wiki.debian.org/rtl819x#Debian_8_.22Jessie.22

If that doesn't solve it, you should probably research the error SIOCSIWENCODEEXT