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Oh, that Pi!
Aug. 19th, 2015 06:50 pmSo, it's been a while since I was able to successfully fire up the Raspberry Pi that runs, among other things, my invoicing program (so I've been doing manual invoices) and several copies of TiddlyWiki5 (for different subject areas) on the internal network.
If memory serves, I took the device offline at about the time I moved my router into my office, with the intention of making sure that, when I did power it up again, I did so with the power supply plugged into a good UPS. I am not quite sure what kinds of power excursions the Pi is capable of withstanding, but the general policy to adopt in such cases is "the fewer the better."
Shortly after having moved the router, I powered up the Pi, expecting it to quietly connect to the network, as it had a number of times before.
It didn't.
It stubbornly didn't.
I hooked a monitor and keyboard up to the Pi to see what was going on, and to make sure that the requisite files—which had worked for at least a year prior to this behavior—hadn't been corrupted.
They hadn't.
At this point, I sort of lose track of what I did. I tried tweaking the files, with no joy as the result. Eventually, I ran out of time and had to turn my attention to other things.
A few minutes ago, I reattached the Pi to a monitor and keyboard and took up the task of figuring out what was what.
A hugely valuable habit to develop when dealing with the behavior of digital doodads is to always remember to check the log files. I finally hunkered down and did this with my Windows system after the umpteenth "hang" occurred while doing pretty much nothing, and although I do not understand the details of what was going on immediately before my system froze, disabling the program that was associated with the last error message logged before—blowie! (and the machine is frozen, incapable of accepting keyboard or mouse input)—has all but eliminated the dreaded behavior.
So after making sure my configuration files were shiny, I restarted networking on my Pi and—sure enough—no connection was made. Checking the log subdirectory on the machine (sorting the files so that the most recent file appeared first in the list) revealed that I might want to look at syslog, which I did, where I learned that my wlan0 device was authenticating successfully with my network, but not getting assigned an IP address.
I guessed that might be the case because my interfaces file was attempting to establish a manual connection, using an IP address of my own choosing, so I edited the former file to allow my router's DHCP server (a piece of software that assigns IP addresses to connecting devices) to do its thing and—bingo!—the Pi connected.
The funny thing? It was assigned the IP address I had specified manually.
I skinned the banana from the other end by making sure that my router always assigns that particular IP address whenever a device with my Pi's MAC (unique number of a network interface) tries to connect.
So now, all is cozy and happy in Pi-land—and I have a handful of invoices to enter.
Cheers...
If memory serves, I took the device offline at about the time I moved my router into my office, with the intention of making sure that, when I did power it up again, I did so with the power supply plugged into a good UPS. I am not quite sure what kinds of power excursions the Pi is capable of withstanding, but the general policy to adopt in such cases is "the fewer the better."
Shortly after having moved the router, I powered up the Pi, expecting it to quietly connect to the network, as it had a number of times before.
It didn't.
It stubbornly didn't.
I hooked a monitor and keyboard up to the Pi to see what was going on, and to make sure that the requisite files—which had worked for at least a year prior to this behavior—hadn't been corrupted.
They hadn't.
At this point, I sort of lose track of what I did. I tried tweaking the files, with no joy as the result. Eventually, I ran out of time and had to turn my attention to other things.
A few minutes ago, I reattached the Pi to a monitor and keyboard and took up the task of figuring out what was what.
A hugely valuable habit to develop when dealing with the behavior of digital doodads is to always remember to check the log files. I finally hunkered down and did this with my Windows system after the umpteenth "hang" occurred while doing pretty much nothing, and although I do not understand the details of what was going on immediately before my system froze, disabling the program that was associated with the last error message logged before—blowie! (and the machine is frozen, incapable of accepting keyboard or mouse input)—has all but eliminated the dreaded behavior.
So after making sure my configuration files were shiny, I restarted networking on my Pi and—sure enough—no connection was made. Checking the log subdirectory on the machine (sorting the files so that the most recent file appeared first in the list) revealed that I might want to look at syslog, which I did, where I learned that my wlan0 device was authenticating successfully with my network, but not getting assigned an IP address.
I guessed that might be the case because my interfaces file was attempting to establish a manual connection, using an IP address of my own choosing, so I edited the former file to allow my router's DHCP server (a piece of software that assigns IP addresses to connecting devices) to do its thing and—bingo!—the Pi connected.
The funny thing? It was assigned the IP address I had specified manually.
I skinned the banana from the other end by making sure that my router always assigns that particular IP address whenever a device with my Pi's MAC (unique number of a network interface) tries to connect.
So now, all is cozy and happy in Pi-land—and I have a handful of invoices to enter.
Cheers...
