Wifi sleep

[Sandorra]

Wifi only Raspberry zero W looses wifi connection after hours / days.

iwconfig in terminal gives reply stating: 
Power Management:on 

So I did:

sudo nano /etc/rc.local

and added (just above exit 0):

iwconfig wlan0 power off

Saved, rebooted and now wifi is stable. 

I Think this should be standard behaviour or a setting in the web interface: disable wifi sleep.

[Tim Curtis]

Hi,

Very odd. I've never seen WiFi "go to sleep" on my ZeroW. 

Does your WiFi connection drop while the UI is open or music is playing?

Below is some data from the ZeroW which has been up for over 4 days continuously and no WiFi issues.

Top part of System info

Code:

         S Y S T E M    P A R A M E T E R S  

       Date and time   = 2019-02-14 07:20:28
       System uptime   = up 4 days, 22 hours, 59 minutes
       Timezone        = America/Detroit
       Release         = moOde 4.5 2019-MM-DD
       Update          = None

       Host name       = rp2
       ETH0  IP        = unassigned
       ETH0  MAC       = no adapter
       WLAN0 IP        = 192.168.1.172
       WLAN0 MAC       = b8:27:eb:7c:97:0d
       WiFi country    = US

       HDWR REV        = Pi-Zero W 512MB v1.1
       SoC             = BCM2835
       CORES           = 1
       ARCH            = armv6l
       RASPBIAN        = 9.6
       KERNEL          = 4.14.92+
       KTIMER FREQ     = 100 Hz
       USB BOOT        = not available
       Warranty        = OK

From Network config screen

Code:

192.168.1.172 - quality 81%, level -53 dBm

[Sandorra]

Only service used is AirPlay, no mpd, samba or other services keeping the wlan0 awake.
The WiFi does nog log its state to syslog or Any other log i am aware off.

Iwconfig is the only way to tell if power management is disabled or not.

Confusing thing is that “wlan0 power on” is short for “wlan power management on”. And that means WiFi will be off after few Hours of netwerk inactivity.

Statistics, now with uptime of 7 hours and counting:

S Y S T E M P A R A M E T E R S

Date and time = 2019-02-14 17:04:38
System uptime = up 7 hours, 42 minutes
Timezone = Europe/Amsterdam
Release = moOde 4.4 2018-12-09
Update = 2018-12-19

Host name = zolder
ETH0 IP = unassigned
ETH0 MAC = no adapter
WLAN0 IP = 192.168.2.99
WLAN0 MAC = b8:27:eb:f5:68:e3
WiFi country = NL


192.168.2.99 - quality 96%, level -43 dBm

[TheOldPresbyope]

As of two years ago, power management of the onboard WiFi transceiver has been disabled in the kernel https://github.com/raspberrypi/firmware/...a8d44af54b

You can confirm this by looking at dmesg output

Code:

pi@moode45k2:~ $ dmesg|grep power
[   17.687733] brcmfmac: power management disabled

In the words of @DougieWatson (he's one of the core RPi developers), https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewt...9#p1239465

For the RPF built-in Broadcom (aka Cypress) WiFi/BT there's no control for power management. It's disabled by the kernel and the only thing you're seeing is a bug in the iw / iwlist / iwconfig commands.

Regards,
Kent

[DRONE7]

@DougieWatson (he's one of the core RPi developers)

and here he is on walkabout contemplating wifi power management......oops
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt...mrc&uact=8

I think Kent  means the acerbic @DougieLawson....

[TheOldPresbyope]

@DougieWatson (he's one of the core RPi developers)

and here he is on walkabout contemplating wifi power management......oops
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt...mrc&uact=8

I think Kent  means the acerbic @DougieLawson....

  

Another sign of the dreaded Old-Timers disease, perhaps.

[Tim Curtis]

lol

[DRONE7]

@DougieWatson (he's one of the core RPi developers)

and here he is on walkabout contemplating wifi power management......oops
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt...mrc&uact=8

I think Kent  means the acerbic @DougieLawson....

Yeah, strange as I thought "That's Liz he's talking to but I don't think it's our Liz Upton"  ... 

[TheOldPresbyope]

@DougieWatson (he's one of the core RPi developers)

and here he is on walkabout contemplating wifi power management......oops
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=htt...mrc&uact=8

I think Kent  means the acerbic @DougieLawson....

Yeah, strange as I thought "That's Liz he's talking to but I don't think it's our Liz Upton"  ... 

In my defense, I knew a Dougie Watson at school more than half a century ago. That's why I think this curious event resulted from OTD (Old Timers Disease).

My Dougie didn't look anything like the Fusillier, though, whereas Liz looks just like my mother-in-law, who knew nothing about WiFi power management 

Regards,
Kent