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Archive for category PC Tweakage

Raspberry Pi Boot vs. Avahi vs. DHCP

Posted by Ed in PC Tweakage, Software on 2017-02-22

Sometimes, one of our homebrew streaming media players will emerge from reset without starting up properly. The system board LEDs blink more-or-less normally, but the WiFi activity monitor seems … odd. This post documents the results of some exploratory surgery hinting at a possible solution.

I set the router’s DHCP server to assign a fixed IP address to each of our homebrew streaming media players based on its MAC address. That seemed less horrible than setting a static IP address in each player’s configuration, although I could see advantages to either approach. For streamer1, the player discussed here, the IP address is 192.168.1.101; that’s a non-routable address used only on our network behind the router.

During the Raspberry Pi’s boot, the default /etc/rc.local script finds and displays its IP address:

_IP=$(hostname -I) || true
if [ "$_IP" ]; then
  printf "My IP address is %s\n" "$_IP"
fi

The /var/log/boot log showed this after one boot:

--- snippage ---
         Starting LSB: Raise network interfaces....
---
[  OK  ] Started LSB: Raise network interfaces..
         Starting ifup for wlan0...
[  OK  ] Started ifup for wlan0.
[  OK  ] Reached target System Initialization.
[  OK  ] Listening on Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Stack Activation Socket.
---
[  OK  ] Reached target Sockets.
---
[  OK  ] Reached target Basic System.
         Starting Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Stack...
         Starting Regular background program processing daemon...
[  OK  ] Started Regular background program processing daemon.
         Starting dhcpcd on all interfaces...
---
[  OK  ] Started Avahi mDNS/DNS-SD Stack.
---
[  OK  ] Started dhcpcd on all interfaces.
[  OK  ] Reached target Network.
---
         Starting /etc/rc.local Compatibility...
         Starting Permit User Sessions...
[  OK  ] Reached target Network is Online.
         Starting LSB: Start NTP daemon...
My IP address is 169.254.14.12
[  OK  ] Started Permit User Sessions.
connect: Network is unreachable
[  OK  ] Started /etc/rc.local Compatibility.
         Starting Terminate Plymouth Boot Screen...
         Starting Hold until boot process finishes up...

That mysterious IP address is a Link-local address, about which Wikipedia says: “If a host on an IEEE 802 (Ethernet) network cannot obtain a network address via DHCP, an address from 169.254.1.0 to 169.254.254.255 may be assigned pseudorandomly.”

So, having the router hand out IP addresses doesn’t quite work the way I expected. The Pi awards itself a link-local IP address before getting one from the DHCP server, presumably because the vast Linux startup Pachinko machine has a race condition. Alas, the pseudorandom LL address doesn’t fit in the 192.168.0.0/16 network handled by the router: the Pi can’t connect to the network.

My code in /etc/rc.local starts the streaming player immediately after the default code displaying the IP address, thus joining the race condition: if the player starts up before the DCHP server assigns the proper IP address, it can’t connect to the music server out on the Interwebs. My code includes a retry loop with a five second delay which eventually connects, at least most of the time, but sometimes gets wedged.

The most reasonable fix seems to involve forcing a static address on each Raspberry Pi, so it can immediately connect to the network, without any negotiation, and get on with the business at hand.

Rather than configuring that in  /etc/network/interfaces as before, the New Hotness adds a stanza to  /etc/dhcpcd.conf:

interface wlan0
static ip_address=192.168.1.101/8
static routers=192.168.1.1
static domain_name_servers=192.168.1.1

En passant, I killed off IPV6 with this line in /etc/sysctl.conf:

net.ipv6.conf.all.disable_ipv6=1

The router doesn’t support IPV6 and there’s no point in using it. Bonus: less log clutter. Double Bonus: startup happens faster!

All of which may help the NTP client update the system clock sooner, perhaps preventing time jumps like this:

2017-02-14 08:42:24,183 INFO: Player setup for: BR1
2017-02-14 08:42:24,184 INFO: Volume control knob: /dev/input/volume
2017-02-14 08:42:24,225 INFO: Starting mplayer on Ambient -> http://185.32.125.42:7331/maschinengeist.org.mp3
2017-02-14 08:42:27,175 INFO: Track name: [Arcticology - Nocturnal Sounds]
2017-02-14 08:42:27,194 INFO: Track unmuted
2017-02-15 04:25:00,386 INFO: Track name: [Oöphoi - Suspended Matter]
2017-02-15 04:25:00,413 INFO: Track unmuted

The timestamps in the first five lines date back to the previous shutdown. The Pi remains plugged in and powered while it’s reset, which apparently preserves the system clock variables, albeit without a hardware clock ticking along: time stands still between shutdown and restart.

In this case, the IP address situation worked itself out before the player started, but the NTP clock reset on the sixth line happened at least three seconds after the log began.

This chunk of /var/log/syslog has more detail:

 highlight="1,5,6,7,8,15,21"]
Feb 14 08:42:24 streamer1 dhcpcd[693]: wlan0: leased 192.168.1.101 for 86400 seconds
Feb 14 08:42:24 streamer1 dhcpcd[693]: wlan0: adding route to 192.168.1.0/24
Feb 14 08:42:24 streamer1 dhcpcd[693]: wlan0: adding default route via 192.168.1.1
Feb 14 08:42:24 streamer1 avahi-daemon[387]: Registering new address record for 192.168.1.101 on wlan0.IPv4.
Feb 14 08:42:24 streamer1 dhcpcd[693]: wlan0: deleting route to 169.254.0.0/16
Feb 14 08:42:24 streamer1 avahi-daemon[387]: Withdrawing address record for 169.254.14.12 on wlan0.
Feb 14 08:42:24 streamer1 avahi-daemon[387]: Leaving mDNS multicast group on interface wlan0.IPv4 with address 169.254.14.12.
Feb 14 08:42:24 streamer1 avahi-daemon[387]: Joining mDNS multicast group on interface wlan0.IPv4 with address 192.168.1.101.
Feb 14 08:42:25 streamer1 dhcpcd[693]: wlan0: no IPv6 Routers available
Feb 14 08:42:25 streamer1 ntpd_intres[728]: DNS 0.debian.pool.ntp.org -> 206.71.252.18
Feb 14 08:42:25 streamer1 ntpd_intres[728]: DNS 1.debian.pool.ntp.org -> 45.33.13.54
Feb 14 08:42:25 streamer1 ntpd_intres[728]: DNS 2.debian.pool.ntp.org -> 204.9.54.119
Feb 14 08:42:25 streamer1 ntpd_intres[728]: DNS 3.debian.pool.ntp.org -> 216.229.4.66
Feb 14 08:42:26 streamer1 ntpd[720]: Listen normally on 6 wlan0 192.168.1.101 UDP 123
Feb 14 08:42:26 streamer1 ntpd[720]: Deleting interface #3 wlan0, 169.254.14.12#123, interface stats: received=0, sent=0, dropped=4, active_time=3 secs
Feb 14 08:42:26 streamer1 ntpd[720]: 216.229.4.66 interface 169.254.14.12 -> (none)
Feb 14 08:42:26 streamer1 ntpd[720]: 204.9.54.119 interface 169.254.14.12 -> (none)
Feb 14 08:42:26 streamer1 ntpd[720]: 45.33.13.54 interface 169.254.14.12 -> (none)
Feb 14 08:42:26 streamer1 ntpd[720]: 206.71.252.18 interface 169.254.14.12 -> (none)
Feb 14 08:42:26 streamer1 ntpd[720]: peers refreshed
Feb 15 04:20:10 streamer1 systemd[1]: Time has been changed
[/sourcecode]

Given the timestamp resolution, NTP (or systemd) apparently resets the clock three seconds after the IP address changes. That may be as good as it gets, if only because the NTP daemon must find its servers, evaluate their status, then whack the local clock.

After forcing the static address, things look better, but it’s too soon to be sure. Many things can clobber streaming, not all of which happen on this side of our router.

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Unicode Keyboard Flameout and Workaround

Posted by Ed in PC Tweakage, Software on 2017-01-26

For unknown reasons, probably having to do with the unmitigated disaster of trying to get an SDRPlay radio working with GNU Radio (about which, more later), Unicode keyboard input stopped working. This is not to be tolerated, because engineering notation requires a lot of Greek letters.

Unicode support seems to be baked into the lowest levels of the Linux operating system, although it’s not clear to me whether it’s in X, QT, GTK, or somewhere else. Googling the obvious keywords was unavailing; evidently this feature never ever fails or, more likely, very few people use it to any extent.

Note that I already have the Compose key set up, but Compose sequences don’t include Greek letters.

After considerable flailing, I added the Simple Greek keyboard layout and defined the (otherwised unused) Menu key as the keyboard layout switcher. That’s a pretty big hammer for a rather small problem; I devoutly hope Unicode mysteriously starts working again.

For reference, the Greek keyboard layout looks like this:

Greek keyboard layout

Greek keyboard layout

I’d have put Ω on the W key, rather than V, but that’s just because so many fonts do exactly that.

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4 Comments

Raspberry Pi vs. Avahi

Posted by Ed in Electronics Workbench, PC Tweakage, Software on 2017-01-18

It turns out that the various Avahi daemons performing the magick between whatever.local names and dotted-quad 192.168.1.101 addresses for Raspberry Pi descend into gibbering madness when confronted with:

  • One name corresponding to multiple IP addresses
  • One IP address used for multiple MAC addresses
  • Multiple names for one IP address
  • Multiple names for one MAC address
  • Multiple IP addresses for one MAC address
  • Multiple MAC addresses for one IP address
  • Any and all combinations of the above at various times

The least of the confusion involved an incorrect IP address linked to a familiar name pulled from deep history by a baffled daemon doing the best it can with what it thinks it knows. Despite what I concluded, rather early in the process, there’s no real error, other than my performing what amounted to a self-inflicted fast-flux nameserver attack.

Anyhow, I devoted the better part of an afternoon to sorting out the mess, which involved labeling all the streaming radio players with their MAC addresses and rebooting them one-by-one to allow all the daemons time to recognize the current situation:

Raspberry Pi 3 - WiFi MAC address

Raspberry Pi 3 – WiFi MAC address

That label corresponds to the Pi 3’s on-board WiFi adapter.

For Pi 2 boxen, the MAC address travels with the WiFi adapter jammed into a USB port:

SunFounder WiFi Adapter - MAC address

SunFounder WiFi Adapter – MAC address

I didn’t label the (unused) Ethernet jacks, figuring I’d solve that problem after it trips me up.

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6 Comments

Raspberry Pi WiFi Adapters

Posted by Ed in Electronics Workbench, PC Tweakage on 2017-01-11

One might be forgiven for thinking these two USB Wifi adapters are essentially identical:

USB Wifi adapters

USB Wifi adapters

Turns out the SunFounder RT5370 (on the top, with the stylin’ curved case) has better performance than the Wifi With Antenna (on the bottom, with full-frontal chunk goin’ on), by a not inconsiderable 5 to 10 dB. Boosting the received power level in the fringe areas of our house from -70 dBm to -63 dBm makes all the difference between not working and steady streaming.

The built-in WiFi antenna on a Raspberry Pi 3 ticks along 10 dB lower, with -80 dBm (10 pW!) at the receiver making for poor communication: a Pi 3 works perfectly within reasonable line-of-sight of the router (even through our wood floor) and wakes up blind in fringe areas. Hacking an external antenna probably helps, but definitely isn’t a net win compared to ten bucks worth of USB adapter.

The wavemon utility (it’s in the Raspbian repo) comes in handy for figuring that sort of thing.

There is, of course, no way to determine anything important about the adapters from their product descriptions, which are essentially identical, right down to the price. Neither have any product identification on their cases. The back of the package for the SunFounder gadget gives some specs, none of which may mean anything (clicky for more dots):

SunFounder RT5370 USB WiFi Adapter Specs

SunFounder RT5370 USB WiFi Adapter Specs

I ordered another SunFounder adapter, Just In Case it comes in handy, with the hope that both behave the same way.

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Xubuntu 16.04 LTS Bringup

Posted by Ed in PC Tweakage, Software on 2017-01-05

Notes on updating my desktop Optiplex 980 from Xubuntu 14.04 LTS to 16.04 LTS, after being unable to compile OpenSCAD, Slic3r, and GNU Radio from source. Blowing three days on reconfiguration & tweakage after a clean install is the price one pays to get rid of a few years of cruft; the old version remains bootable and lootable on another partition, Just In Case.

Install:

  • nfs-common
  • xfce-goodies
  • hp2xx
  • xsane, xscanimage
  • kate (which hauls in a big hunk of wayland, alas)
  • digikam
  • chromium-browser
  • devilspie2
  • dropbox (from site)
  • remmina

Apply:

The hacks required to ensure NFS mounts happen before signing in seem to be obsolete. Given that systemd now controls everything, I have NFI how to proceed if that’s not the case.

The Xubuntu load progress display looks like it’s scaled up from 640×480.

There seems no way to disable on-screen notifications without deep hackery; some of the collateral damage involves the death of the volume control applet in the indicator panel thingy, so I didn’t try very hard.

The aforementioned volume control now fires up the Pulseaudio control dialog. That display explained why the audio came out of the 980’s crappy internal speaker, but switching it to the HDMI output produced only silence. After blowing away ~/.config/pulse and rebooting that sucker, it’s all good: Linux audio remains a slow-motion train wreck.

The initial sign-on dialog appears on the portrait monitor, minus rotation, because the dialog box follows the mouse pointer: the initial mouse position sits one pixel beyond the landscape monitor. Blind-type the password, whack Enter, and it’s all good.

FWIW, I’ve installed the XFCE flavor of Mint Linux on the laptops, but that’s basically Xubuntu with (some of) the ugly sanded off and really doesn’t buy much for somebody who pays no attention to eyecandy.

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Raspberry Pi Streaming Radio Player: Yet Another Cheap Wireless Keypad

Posted by Ed in PC Tweakage, Software on 2017-01-04

One might think, just from looking, that this black wireless USB numeric keypad:

BonyTek Wireless USB Numeric Keypad

BonyTek Wireless USB Numeric Keypad

Was identical to the white keypads I already used on the streaming media players:

Wireless Keypad - colored labels

Wireless Keypad – colored labels

One would, of course, be wrong.

They both claim to be manufactured by “Creative Labs” with a 0x062a vendor ID, but with different model IDs:

  • White = 0x4101 “Wireless Keyboard/Mouse”
  • Black = 0x4182

Astonishingly, that model ID appears nowhere in Google’s search results, yet it actually works when plugged into my desktop PC.

The new model ID requires Yet Another Udev Rule in /etc/udev/rules.d/Streamer.rules:

ATTRS{idVendor}=="062a", ATTRS{idProduct}=="4182", ENV{ID_INPUT_KEYBOARD}=="1", SYMLINK+="input/keypad"

No big deal by now …

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Raspberry Pi: Forcing VNC Display Resolution

Posted by Ed in PC Tweakage on 2016-12-23

You can use VNC with a headless Raspberry Pi, but, absent a display with which to negotiate the screen resolution, X defaults something uselessly small: 720×480. To force a more reasonable resolution, edit /boot/config.txt and set the framebuffer size:

framebuffer_width=1920
framebuffer_height=1280

You can use a nonstandard resolutions, as with the 1920×1280 that fits neatly on my 2560×1440 landscape monitor, but getting too weird will surely bring its own reward. When you plug in a display, X will ought to negotiate as usual for the highest resolution the display can handle.

The System Configuration dialog has a “Resolution” button offering standard resolutions:

RPi display resolution configuration

RPi display resolution configuration

The shiny RPi Pixel UI bakes the RealVNC server directly into whatever handles the startup process these days, rendering all previous recommendations about forcing VNC resolutions inoperative. I found the trick of editing the config file on StackExchange after the usual flailing around.

Memo to Self: Remmina (the VNC client I use in XFCE on my desktop PC) doesn’t respond well to having the VNC server shut down while it’s connected. Fire up a command prompt, enter this:

sleep 10 ; sudo reboot

Then, quick like a bunny, disconnect the VNC session.

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