Moodlebox 4.0.0 : Wifi connections drops after each request

Hannes

P.S. Point 4 tests the RPi as a Wifi client, not as an access point, I suppose.

Hannes

Hi again

Update: I installed a moodlebox-3.12.0.img on a different micro sd card.
There is no problem with the wifi signal as the following ping test shows.

Moodlebox
Version 3.12.0, 2021-07-11.

ping 10.0.0.1
.........
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=499 ttl=64 time=3.52 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=500 ttl=64 time=3.09 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=501 ttl=64 time=4.48 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=502 ttl=64 time=16.1 ms
64 bytes from 10.0.0.1: icmp_seq=503 ttl=64 time=2.50 ms
^C
--- 10.0.0.1 ping statistics ---
503 packets transmitted, 503 received, 0% packet loss, time 502796ms
rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 1.398/7.450/323.424/24.228 ms

So I plan to work with version 3.12.0.
I am though ready to do inquiries why version 4.0.0 has problems if somebody can show me how to enable debugging / tracing of the access point activities.

But as for moodlebox version 3.12.0
I do not know the moodle admin account user name and password for 3.12.0. I did not find it on the moodlebox.net website. Could somebody help me please?

--Hannes

Hannes

The admin user name / password for Moodlebox 3.12.0 is also
moodlebox
MoodleBox4$

Nicolas

Indeed. This has not changed since MoodleBox 2.6.0. See: https://moodlebox.net/en/help/moodlebox-credentials/.

Nicolas

Hannes This could be a bug with the new minimal firmware. See also this.

Hannes

I understand that Moodlebox 4.1.0 will have a different firmware software for the wireless access point (AP). And that your tests went well so far. Is the test image available for download?

Nicolas

Hannes I understand that Moodlebox 4.1.0 will have a different firmware software for the wireless access point (AP).

It depends. MoodleBox relies on the official Raspberry Pi OS. The new minimal firmware is already included in MoodleBox 4.0.0, and the tests went well indeed. ~~I'm afraid I got no other feedback of buggy behaviour than this.~~

For next version, there's no plan to use unofficial firmware, but if Raspberry Foundation updates the firmware, we'll have a new one.

And there's no test image yet. For reference, progress towards next version can be followed in Github.

Edit: There's another similar feedback (in french), but with no detail.

Hannes

So the firmware for the AP currently included in Moodlebox 4.0.0 is a minimal one and from the official RPi OS distribution. It is supposed to support more WIFI clients again.

So for my case I continue to use Moodlebox 3.12.0 (which needs an ethernet cable to connect to another network) and check for news from time to time.

ralfkrause

There another report about this problem
https://github.com/iiab/iiab/issues/2853#issuecomment-1004439533

Nicolas

ralfkrause I think this is not the same issue: the wireless chip firmware version is different. On MoodleBox 4.0.0, version is 7.45.241. The report linked shows older version 7.45.18.

FYI: Check your wireless chip firmware version with

dmesg | grep brcmfmac

You'll get a line like

[    6.328844] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware: BCM4345/6 wl0: Nov  1 2021 00:37:12 version 7.45.241 (1a2f2fa CY) FWID 01-5209c09

indicating the version.

moodlemuse

Hello, any updates on this topic? Is anyone else using Moodle 4 yet and can report on the stability of wifi connections.

Ratna

moodlemuse Right now I don't have a RPi 4. When I tested about two years ago http://www.syndrega.ch/blog/#benchmarking-moodlebox-on-different-raspberry-pi-models, Pi 4 wireless performance/stability was not different from either 3 B or 3 B+. I don't expect the situation to be different today, because they still share same the wireless circuitry and firmware. Insufficient power supplies and conflicting wireless transmitters (sending on the same channel) have been the main causes of instability as reported here.

tgillett

I have experienced a similar problem with wifi connection instability on Moodlebox 4.3.0

I have made a fresh installation with no changes from default settings and run it on RPi 4 hardware that works fine for other applications that have wifi Access Point.
The Moodlebox runs on Ch 11 and there are two other wifi APs in the vicinity running on Ch 1 and Ch 6.
The regulatory domain is set to Au.
Client devices (eg HP Probook 4340 with Intel wifi and similar) drop the wifi connection randomly, sometimes after just a minute or so. There are only a few client devices connected.
If the client is set up to auto connect to the Moodlebox AP, it will reconnect fairly quickly.

I have not seen an obvious pattern to the disconnects, but they do seem to be somewhat related to a user making a request as Hannes mentioned in his original post. That said, If the client device is logged in to Moodlebox and left alone without any user activity it will usually disconnect after a while.

Connecting the Moodlebox to my LAN via Ethernet, then connecting the client device via an Access Point on the LAN does not appear to produce the problem. This seems to indicate that the problem lies with the RPi wifi.

I note that one of the features of Moodlebox 4 is the introduction of wifi AP-STA mode.
I assume that this feature is not operational by default (since no host wifi credentials are set) but is there some setting for this?

I have attached the relevant dmesg output for "brcmfmac" below for info.
I note that "power save" is enabled.
Is it possible that this may be causing a problem?

I suspect that trying to use the RPi wifi for any significant number of user device connections is always going to be problematic. Even with the new "minimal" wifi firmware mod, the most wifi connections is 20, best case, which is not terribly useful for classes of ₃₀ students.

Any ideas appreciated.

moodlebox@moodlebox:~ $ dmesg | grep brcmfmac
[ 5.432251] brcmfmac: F1 signature read @0x18000000=0x15264345
[ 5.547934] brcmfmac: brcmf_fw_alloc_request: using brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio for chip BCM4345/6
[ 5.569289] brcmfmac mmc1:0001:1: Direct firmware load for brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio.raspberrypi,4-model-b.bin failed with error -2
[ 5.599380] usbcore: registered new interface driver brcmfmac
[ 5.841003] brcmfmac: brcmf_fw_alloc_request: using brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio for chip BCM4345/6
[ 5.841345] brcmfmac: brcmf_fw_alloc_request: using brcm/brcmfmac43455-sdio for chip BCM4345/6
[ 5.846818] brcmfmac: brcmf_c_preinit_dcmds: Firmware: BCM4345/6 wl0: Nov 1 2021 00:37:12 version 7.45.241 (1a2f2fa CY) FWID 01-5209c09
[ 7.720920] brcmfmac: brcmf_cfg80211_set_power_mgmt: power save enabled