Trying to help a friend..."supplicant file"

Help setting up WiFi
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KK4VOB
Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Jan 28, 2021 3:47 am

Trying to help a friend..."supplicant file"

Post by KK4VOB »

Hello Ladies & Gents.
I have a friend that is building his first HotSpot, it's a duplex hat on a Pi Zero W. To make things hard we're doing it over the phone due to distance between us. Here is my question:

His particular flavor of mmdvm hat requires the supplicant. I directed him to the website (https://www.pistar.uk/wifi_builder.php) and he created the file no problem and we dropped it onto the microSD card and off we went. Well, I think he has a corrupted install of Pi-star (pre-loaded by seller) because when he logged in, half the config page is not there and what is there has fields blacked out in sections. Very weird. I know it has nothing to do with the supplicant file but, because his directions that came with it specified having to use the supplicant setup for wi-fi I was unsure if there was a special reason for having to do it that way (use supplicant) or, can I have him blank out the pre-installed version of pi-star and install the most updated version and hopefully get a clean un-corrupted install that I can walk him through.

In other words; I guess what I'm asking is why did his require the supplicant while my HotSpots don't? Is it a hardware issue that requires it or is it just the much older versions of pi-star that use the supplicant and I can go ahead and blank the card out and install newest version with no problems for him?

I don't want to blank out the current Factory installed pi-star OS and find out that it was a "proprietary version" of some kind and the hardware prevents loading Pi-Star_RPi_V4.1.4_08-Feb-2021.zip. I'm not aware of a proprietary version or if there is such a thing but I wanted to check before I went any further.

I hope this all makes sense and I have explained my question correctly. Any advice is appreciated.

Edit to add this is what he has bought:
https://www.amazon.com/Duplex-Hotspot-S ... 707&sr=8-1
AF6VN
Posts: 821
Joined: Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:15 am

Re: Trying to help a friend..."supplicant file"

Post by AF6VN »

The wpa_supplicant file that one drops into the FAT partition is only a means to get a WiFi configuration into a system before first boot. On boot it moves the information to the EXT4 partition (which Windows can not access, hence use of FAT partition -- if Windows could access EXT4, one could edit the wpa_supplicant file in-place)

If it isn't there, the Pi-Star software will go into Access Point mode -- where one connects to the Pi-Star access point INSTEAD of their normal Wi-Fi router -- and then uses the dashboard to fill in Wi-Fi information. Saving that creates the run-time wpa_supplicant file which will be used on next boot to connect to the specified Wi-Fi router/node.

One can, as I recall, define multiple access point nodes using the dashboard.

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AF6VN
Dennis L Bieber
AF6VN
Posts: 821
Joined: Fri Jul 20, 2018 1:15 am

Re: Trying to help a friend..."supplicant file"

Post by AF6VN »

KE7FNS wrote: Wed Mar 10, 2021 11:29 pm Windows 10 can access Linux partitions if you install the Windows Subsystem for Linux 2. Windows 10 preview build 20211 comes with WSL 2 already installed. It will probably become a normal feature in a future update.
I think I tried that once, but it impacted the use of Oracle VirtualBox. Took some time to revert back to the original WSL.

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AF6VN
Dennis L Bieber
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