KA Lite server won't start on Raspberry PI 3 -- eth0 and wlan0 both go dead

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22

Hello Benjamin,
Thanks for your frank response about the obsolete RPI hotspot scripts. I must say though, that I find it disappointing to hear that documentation that is so out of date is still on the KA Lite website. I would much appreciate it if someone at KA Lite would update the scripts and documentation for the RPI3. I think there is great potential for what you are doing at KA Lite, but not if the software remains in DIY hacker mode.

I tried getting a hotspot working as you suggest using separate online guides, including the one recommended by rifatbd. All of these required too much low level patching, tweaking, and experimentation. I need something that works out of the box.

What I ended up doing is buying a standalone WIFI router. I connected that to the RPI3 eth0 port, and that works fine, although it is a shame Iā€™m not using the RPI3ā€™s builtin WIFI capability. But, now I have a higher strength WIFI hotspot, and Iā€™m working with standard Raspian and KA Lite installs on the RPI3.

Best,
Jim

23

@jsterken you are right ā€“ I donā€™t like it, neither. Could you tell me where you found the reference? We should have it removed.

Thereā€™s someone else whoā€™s eager to contribute to this over in the Github issueā€¦ https://github.com/learningequality/ka-lite/issues/5228

24

Hello Benjamin,
The unclear documentation about setting up a hotspot is in the installation instructions at: http://ka-lite.readthedocs.io/en/0.16.x/installguide/advanced.html#raspberry-pi-wifi

The instructions talk about there being support for both the Raspberry Pi WiPi adaptor and the Edimax EW-7811Un. I have a RPI3 with a built in WIFI adapter, so I initially assumed that the install procedure would be the same as for the Raspberry Pi WiPi adaptor. There is no language about what to do for the RPI3 with built in adapter. It didnā€™t work as I described above. Also, I tried using an Edimax adapter. That didnā€™t work either.

Elvis led me through a series of extra workarounds and low-level patches, but they didn't work either.

These installation scripts and the accompanying installation instructions for the Raspberry PI need to be debugged and updated.

As a general comment, I think as well that the whole install procedure for the Raspberry PI should be simplified so it is more accessible to a wider audience.  Instead of having to type in a series of sudo apt-get, wget, and dpkg commands with no obvious means to determine if those commands which generate reams of messages, warnings, and diagnostics are working properly, there should be a single high level install script or GUI that leads the user through the entire installation procedure, monitoring for errors along the way, and prompting as necessary for additional information.  As it stands, I expect it is almost impossible to install on the Raspberry PI successfully if you are not an experienced Linux programmer.

Having switched over to doing my project on a Windows PC connected to a standalone WIFI router, things are going much more smoothly.  I'd still like to do this project on an RPI3 sometime though.

     Jim
25

Hi
I am new to the forum. I just want to echo what @jsterken has said:

I am trying to install KA-Lite on a RPI3 (with built a built in wifi adapter). With some trouble I managed to get everything working up util the point where I wanted to set up the RPI3 as a local hotspot. I followed the instructions at http://ka-lite.readthedocs.io/en/0.16.x/installguide/advanced.html#raspberry-pi-wifi

Here is my problem:

  • After reboot the RPI3 is not able to connect to internet via wifi nor via Ethernet. The hotspot kalite is visible to other devices but they can not connect. (exactly the same symptoms as reported by @jsterken)

  • I have read the whole thread above but am still not sure what to do in order to get things working.

Here is what I want to do:

  • I want to be able to download content and configure the RPI3 at home while connected to the internet (over wifi or ethernet). When I ship it I would like the RPI3 to work as a stand-alone hotspot where users can connect over wifi directly to the RPI3 without having to set up a separate wifi router box.

  • After shipped, at times, there might also be opportunities to connect the RPI3 to the internet to synch data and download new content.

Could I please ask for a short summary of how to best solve this problem?

I understand there might be a solution in what you write, @benjamin, but I am just not sure what you mean when you write ā€œKA Lite will listen on all IPs, so you will be able to access it both on the internal and external interface of your hotspot.ā€

Thanks a lot!
Stefan

26

Thanks for the thorough description, @Stefan_Oberg - itā€™s a bit beyond my reach, however, to provide a full guide to setting up hotspots on the RPi.

What I meant is that: Provided you have a hotspot successfully configured on the RPi3, then KA Lite should bind to any IP address, both of the ethernet, local loopback interface, and the WLAN interface. In other words: No further configuration is necessary for KA Lite.

I havenā€™t yet setup a hotspot on my RPi3, so I can only recommend that you try out other peopleā€™s advices on this. But weā€™d be very happy if you could share the experience here for the benefit of the RPi guide. Ultimately, what would be great, was if this guide contained the steps for setting up a hotspot.

27

Thanks for quick reply @benjamin!

OK. I will reinstall the RPi to get out of the current deadlock. Once I have the wifi adapter working again I will try to connect to it directly. My only concern would be how to (easily) know what IP to browse to each time.

28

Well, in a strange way, Iā€™m glad to hear that Stefan has encountered the same problems I did. I had a concern that it was just me and that I was messing something up on my RPi3 due to my inexperience with it.

As I said above, I gave up on implementing a hotspot for the RPi3 using other peopleā€™s descriptions and advice. The instructions I found required pretty low level and extensive patches and ā€œtricksā€ which I didnā€™t feel comfortable doing or maintaining as well as possible conflicts with the KA Lite installation. I solved the problem by hooking up a cheap WIFI router to the RPI3 and using it as the hotspot. I also found that the RPi3 performance with KA Lite was sluggish, so I doubted it would scale to 30-40 simultaneous users on tablets. I implemented on a PC instead, hooked to a WIFI router serving as the hotspot. I tried configuring a PC as a hotspot using the Windows ā€œvirtual routerā€ feature, but I found that to be too slow too.

Ben, in my view, given the KA Lite mission, I would think that it would be a pretty important use case to make it possible for someone to be able to bring an RPi3 (or a PC) loaded with KA Lite content into a classroom with no electricity and no internet connectivity, and have the RPi3, serve up course content to a classroom of 30-40 students with tablets. It is an open question whether an RPi3 could support that load, but with a carefully done implementation, it should be able to do handle it. We are tantalizingly close to being able to do that now, but the lack of a working, debugged, integrated hotspot capability in the KA Lite installation is standing in the way.

Iā€™m not sure how implementation priorities are defined for KA Lite, but my hope that this use case will be given a higher priority. It would be a breakthrough for the rural areas of Kenya where I am doing work.

Best regards,
Jim

29

Hi
Just thought I would report back on this, hopefully to the benefit of others and the project.

I have now reinstalled the RPi3 without the KA-Lite PPA and without trying to set up a local hotspot.

I can now run the KA-Lite server via the local web interface and I can connect with tablets to the KA-Lite server by typing the RPi3s IP-number on the local wifi network. It seems my ASUS router assigns the same IP every time the RPi3 restarts (at least so far) so it is a workable solution. Although, I would prefer to run the set-up without a dedicated router.

Here is a description of my process through the documentation and the problems I encountered:

  • I started from http://ka-lite.readthedocs.io. In the menu on the left I clicked on ā€œInstallation Guideā€, then ā€œLinuxā€, then ā€œRaspberry PIā€

  • Problem 1: I clicked on the ā€œ(Download as .deb file)ā€. This gave me a 404 when I tried a few days ago. (However, I see that it is working now.)

  • I followed the instructions to download and install KA-Lite from the command line. This worked well.

  • I tried to install the PPA by clicking on the link ā€œDebian/Ubuntu: Subscribe to updates through a PPAā€, and follow the instructions and typing the commands suggested for RaspberyPi.

  • Problem 2: The PPA did not install because (I think) the commands on the page refer to another Linux distribution than the default distribution (Debian, Jessie), that was installed when I set up the RPi3 from NOOBS. The error messages included something like ā€œFiles do not have an extensionā€

  • I got some help changing some references in the ā€œsourcesā€ file of the OS (possibly other changes as well) and we were then able to install he PPA

  • I tried to set up a Wifi hotspot by clicking on the link "Raspberry Pi Wi-Fi " and follow the instructions and typing the commands suggested, omitting the instructions under point ā€œ4. Install the USB adaptor softwareā€ as the RPi3 has a built in Wifi adaptor.

  • Problem 3: After completing the process and rebooting, the RPi3 had lost all network interfaces and I (with my limited knowledge) could not get it working again except by doing a complete reinstall of the OS.

  • In this support thread I found a link to a new install guide for RPi3: http://ka-lite.readthedocs.io/en/develop/installguide/rpi_install.html

  • Problem 4. I can not see that this guide is accessible to anyone that comes in to to ka-lite.readthedocs.io directly

Based on my experiences, I think it would be helpful to make the following changes:

  • Make the RPi3 installation documentation available right in the ā€œInstallation Guideā€ menu, as follows:
    Windows
    Mac OS X
    Linux
    RaspberryPi
    etc

  • Make the RPi3 installation guide all as one sequence, without having to jump between docs, possibly as follows:
    Step 1. Install Raspian (as now)
    Step 2. Intstall KA Lite (as now)
    Optional Step 3: Install PPA (show updated instructions and commands for Raspberry default Linux distribution)
    Optional Step 4: Set up RPi3 as hotspot (show updated instructions and commands that will work)
    Step 5: Usage (as now)

Sorry for lots of text. Hope it can be useful to someone. Thanks again for the good work you all are doing!

30

Hi @Stefan_Oberg - could you clarify the "without"s in the above sentence?

The problems regarding PPA instructions are already fixed but in the development docs

If youā€™re interested in the progress for 0.17, have a look at the docs: Release Notes ā€” KA Lite 0.18.0dev0 documentation

You may use the PPA instructions here: Other options ā€” KA Lite 0.18.0dev0 documentation

We try only to work on issues that are beneficial for getting stuff deployed in the window up until the new project Kolibri is mature for deployment.

I tried to set up a Wifi hotspot by clicking on the link "Raspberry Pi Wi-Fi " and follow the instructions and typing the commands suggested

Which guide?

Problem 4. I can not see that this guide is accessible to anyone that comes in to to ka-lite.readthedocs.io directly

Those are the development docs, we havenā€™t released them yet, this will happen when 0.17 is released.

The best way to get involved, seeing that you have a lot of feedback, would be to make contributions for the current development branch. There is already a new RPi3 tutorial which could need both proof-reading and a whole section on setting up the network, targetting issues such as setting and finding a static IP address.

The main problem in writing these guides is that we expect people with little or no knowledge of basic computer network theory to be creating a computer networkā€¦ we can and should really do our best so they succeed, but personally I can accept a bit of defeat in this regard :slight_smile:

31

Big thanks @Stefan_Oberg and @jsterken for all your feedback in this thread, will definitely be prioritizing RPi for the next release.

Feel most welcome with more feedback or concerns, and please ask away if you are interested in contributing to documentation or code. You can contribute with documentation by clicking the ā€œEdit on Githubā€ button, to right on individual docs pages.

32

@benjamin
Thanks for thorough reply. Much appreciated!

First - I was using the documentation that is publicly available at KA Lite Documentation ā€” KA Lite 0.17.5 documentation
I then click on: Installation guide, Linux, RaspberryPI

When I said:

ā€¦ I meant that I completely omitted the last instructions in the RaspberryPI section of that page. They read:

You can also add the PPA, see Debian/Ubuntu: Subscribe to updates through a PPA, and then run sudo apt-get install ka-lite-raspberry-pi.

After installing, you can setup a Wifi hotspot using this guide: Raspberry Pi Wi-Fi

The last part of the second instruction, ā€œRaspberry Pi Wifiā€ is a link. (I would paste it here but the forum platform tells me ā€œSorry but you can not post a link to that hostā€). When I follow the instructions on the linked page - that is when the Raspberry PI3 freezes up on all network interfaces.

By omitting that completely, I can run the Raspberry PI3 with network access via a router, and connect to it from other devices via its IP on the LAN. (192.168.0.37). But, that of course requires a router.

You are right - I should probably rather contribute to the docs than write lengthy posts here. :slight_smile: However, at the moment I feel I am fully booked.

The new documentation looks much clearer! It does not seem to link to the problematic section about setting up a hotspot.

Thanks again!

33

Hi @Stefan_Oberg - thanks for elaborating! I found the link you spoke about in the old (but current) docs: http://ka-lite.readthedocs.io/en/latest/installguide/advanced.html#raspberry-pi-wifi

As you say, this has been removed in the development version and so this old broken instruction will soon be in the pile of legacy documentation, hopefully not bothering too many people :slight_smile: