WiFi Wanderings at ROUGOL, Mon 17th June 2024

Tonight’s meeting of the RISC OS User Group Of London is:

WiFi Wanderings, and other general chat

Monday 17th June 2024, 7.45pm

The Duke of Sussex
(upstairs in the Chichester or Petworth Room from 6.30pm)
23 Baylis Road, London, SE1 7AY
http://www.rougol.jellybaby.net/venue.html

Also online via Zoom from 7.30pm

https://rougol.jellybaby.net/meetings/

No speaker this month, so we will be having some general RISC OS chat while playing around with the ROOL and ROD WiFi stacks to compare how they perform. Do bring along anything you would like to show or talk about, or any queries you need help with.

Our venue is right next to Waterloo Station and there is parking directly outside. Directions here – https://rougol.jellybaby.net/venue.html

For any queries or to receive the Zoom link (same as previous months) contact us – https://rougol.jellybaby.net/contacts/

Bryan.

Something that may be worth investigating at tonight’s meeting is the stability of the wifi stacks.

I have not been able to run Wifi (either stack) with IRIS browser for extended periods. IRIS will often lock up, the mouse cursor can still be moved but everything is unresponsive. I am not sure if this is a crash with IRIS or the IRQ ‘Race condition’ that has been mentioned elsewhere.
I have done weeks of testing various iterations and often get such hangs where the machine is unresponsive but I can still move the mouse about – it appears the OS won’t return back to Appspace (if that is the termnilogy). There is other software that also exhibited this issue but not sure I can recall what it was. I am also having trouble getting Netradio to work with the Wifi stacks.

Just managed to run 5.30 stable with ROOL wifi drivers and ROD 7.06 stack for 72 hours non stop – with Netsurf open and have been able to still load files the whole time. So it must be IRIS (jan 2024 version).
This is a clean install of 5.30 stable build using Jon’s Partition Manager with stable firmware and booting from an SSD on RPi4B 4GB (2 different 4Bs and have also tried an 8Gb one).

I use DHCP with the Wifi drivers.

The other thing is I can not get VNC server to work. I have Jeffery’s version 0.22 (2021-04-05) which I think is the latest. It worked Ok previously on early RO Rom versions (up to 5.28 – both wired and wifi – wispy etc) when accessing from a W10 machine using TightVNC (or RealVNC). Now it will start, i can enter user name and password and get the RO window temporarily and then it will crash at the client end. The RO desktop may or may not survive the crash but is usually still up and working just cannot get a reliable connection. As like to run the RPi’s headless this is a problem. And would love to run them headless on wifi. Will have to check wired networking and VNC to see if this fairs any better. Is there a more recent version of VNC server that would be worth a try ?

As like to run the RPi’s headless this is a problem.

I think my Pi 3B+, running the ROD stack, currently has an uptime of about two weeks since last reset (and that was due to a thunderstorm). I was even able to fiddle the command line to reconnect to the new Livebox after changing ADSL to fibre. Luckily I fudged it so the AP had the same SSID and password. ;)

Note that I don’t use the net manager to handle the connection, it’s a simple Obey that calls the commands directly at boot.

Thoughts/comments ref DOwnUnderROUser…

1) Iris does push the system in unusual ways. We use it here via wifi, so wouldn’t expect problems, but it is certainly possible it is pushing boundaries.

2) We have an updated beta wifi for the ROD stack awaiting release which resolves an issue that could crop up after extended use on some wifi chips.

3) For VNC, we use it a lot at ROD for various things – moreso Richard than myself (I mostly use it for Zoom meetings). Richard uses it almost all the time, to monitor servers and access various RISC OS devices around his office. I use the version in our !PiTools (which also includes a UI to configure it), but that is based on Jeffrey’s latest AFAIK. I’ve demo’d wifi via this, so it should be OK, although I haven’t done so in the last few weeks.

4) Are your Pi(s) overclocked at all? I had issues with a machine locking up a lot with Iris, and was really scratching my head. Somewhat in desperation, I dropped the (otherwise seemingly OK… but probably not really) overclock from 2Ghz to 1.8 and the problems went away. I think this was a case that Iris was simply pushing the machine much harder than general desktop stuff, and that caused problems with the overclock to manifest quickly.

5) It is probably worth remembering that both ROD and ROOL wifi solutions are very new, and pretty complex. They use code (SDIO) which hasn’t really been hammered before. As such, the odd rough edge is to be expected, so make sure to report problems directly to both companies. Don’t assume every programmer reads forums :)

I have not recently tried ROD’s WiFi recently but a quick look at ROOL’s WiFi shows it to be a bit delicate. As ROOL’s WiFi is a bit slow it is not in use.

After some brief testing with ROOL’s WiFi on an RPi4B then the WiFi does loose any connection after a while, which restores on disconnecting reconnecting. There is no error.

I think connection to vncserver on the RPi4 is fine, in itself, but it drops when the WiFi drops.

As I understand the forum reports ROD’s WiFi is more stable.

Iris is not involved in this here.

I do not have any useful diagnostics so far and obviously the WiFi is now working with vnc functioning (slowly).

HTH.

Something that may be worth investigating at tonight’s meeting is the stability of the wifi stacks.

Do you use Geminus?

about two weeks since last reset

Yup.

*uptime
Uptime: 12 days, 4 hours, 51 minutes, and 5 seconds.
*

That’s with the ROD stack, NetSurf, SparkFS, Zap, and Tea running continuously, plus developing software yesterday and… I’m sure I’ve fiddled with something else in those past 12 days.

Unfortunately I can’t tell you how much data has been transferred over WiFi as…

*WBInfo
no stats yet
*

Boo! ;)

Oh, and since the fixes back when, my three shares have been up and connected for most of that time. It’s quite pleasant to have access to the files on the other machine as if it was just another (three) device(s) attached to this one.

Iris does push the system in unusual ways.

You don’t say… “half-word Thumb2 JavaScript JIT acceleration”.

So maybe it’s also worth asking if there are issues if the alignment exceptions have been disabled, or not.

We have an updated beta wifi for the ROD stack awaiting release

Cool!

VNC […] Jeffrey’s latest

Never thought to try that. Perhaps I should give it a go.
I… don’t really do remote stuff tho’. Hmm…

Well that was a slightly chaotic but fun and educational meeting!

The short summary of what we learnt is – if you want to use wifi, download the ROD stack and their Network Manager, it’s more reliable, faster, and with a much better UI than the ROOL offering. Read on for a longer description of how that conclusion was reached…

First I downloaded the RO5.30 image and put it on a fresh SD card, then started up the Pi4 and !Boot merged in the ROOL wifi drivers. Then go into Configure – Network – Internet – Interfaces. Turn off the wired interface and activate the wifi driver. Click Configure and enable DHCP. Close all the config windows, then reboot. This is far too complicated and very unintuitive for an inexperienced user.

During the reboot it sits there trying to get a DHCP address, which is silly because it can’t do that until its connected to a wifi hotspot! Nothing you can do except wait for it to timeout (30secs ish?).

When the desktop appears there is a wifi icon. Click Menu on it select the wifi network. Here I had my first problem when testing it at home – it connected to my wifi, but then couldn’t access the internet through it. Even a ping 8.8.8.8 failed. I’d not had any problems when previously using the ROD stack. So I turned on a hotspot on my phone, and after another slow reboot with pointless DHCP attempt, was able to connect to that and access the internet, yay. Did a quick download test, seems slower than the ROD stack when I last used that, but didn’t have time to do a full test. Set off for the pub…

Fired it up at the pub (slow boot, pointless DHCP, sigh) and I was able to connect to their wifi, although the menu of available hotspots was a bit of a mess as it contained multiple entries for each available network, all mixed up and not in alphabetical order. Run Iris and use it to click through the pub’s portal, and we’re on the internet, woo! Tried a few tests, hit a peak speed of 200-300KB/s, but this is a bit unscientific as we don’t know how busy the pub’s wifi was.

We want those on Zoom to be able to see this, so need to connect to the pi with VNC to share the screen. Unfortunately the pub’s wifi is well configured and the clients are isolated from each other, so the laptop and pi couldn’t see each other. Decide we will connect both to a hotspot on Leo’s phone (he has bigger data limit than me). The menu with the list of wifi networks is now almost the full height of the screen, with many repeated entries, and as noted, not sorted into order. Trying to find the phone hotspot in the list is therefore tricky, but it turns out its not on there! The Pi can’t see it, and attempts to enter the details manually also fail. More slow reboots, no luck.

Getting fed up with it now, and those on Zoom have had to put up with my commentary with nothing to look at. Decide to install the ROD stack.

Go into Configure and turn off the ROOL wifi before starting. Run the ROD Install program. It takes only a second to do the install, then it reboots the Pi. The reboot is so quick that we don’t even see it, as it takes longer for the TV to notice the video signal than it takes for the boot to complete!

Run Network Manager. There is Leo’s phone in the neat and tidy (no duplicates) wifi menu. Click it, enter password, it connects. Start Iris, and we’re all go. SO much easier and more intuitive.

Used Network Manager to create a “LeoPhone” profile and set it to auto-connect. Did another quick reboot to test it, and upon running Network Manager it automatically reestablishes the connection, all in the background and fully multitasking. If Network Manager was put into the startup, this would all happen automatically when the desktop starts without tying up the boot process.

Downloaded VNCserver. First run of it aborts and crashes, damn. Do a (fortunately quick!) reboot, and it works this time. Now we could use VNC to connect to the Pi so those on Zoom could see what was going on :-) Thanks for everyone’s patience.

Final conclusion – use the ROD stack! More importantly, for a standard image that non RISC OS experts might use, ROD’s Network Manager would be much more intuitive.

(sorry, that went on a bit!)

A non wifi related problem that made the repeated ROOL stack slow reboots even more annoying:

Iris is needed to get through the pub’s portal, but I hadn’t had time to install it so brought it with me on a USB stick. However the version of SparkFS that comes with 5.30 kept locking up trying to unzip it. I tried copying it to RAM disc and unzipping there, increasing memory allocations, etc, but it just hung at a different point every time, requiring a power off/on, followed by the slow reboot with pointless DHCP attempt, deep sigh.

Ended up downloading InfoZip on my laptop and copying that across via the USB stick (old school!) and using that to unzip Iris.

Also, it’s a long time since I’ve used the standard ROOL disc image rather than RO Direct, and I’d forgotten how… sparse it is. So lacking in apps and utilities. See AndyR’s rant about it over on IconBar – https://www.iconbar.com/forums/viewthread.php?threadid=13260&page=1#125631

Finally, nice to meet new attendee Graham from StarDot, and also “meet” DownUnderROUser (Jock) who joined the tail end of the Zoom call at about 2am :-)

with pointless DHCP attempt

Surely an easy fix – if there’s no connection marked as “up”, just don’t bother…?

The menu with the list of wifi networks is now almost the full height of the screen, with many repeated entries

🤦

Final conclusion – use the ROD stack!

Surely I’m not the only one who thinks it’s a bit ridiculous that we have two entirely different WiFi solutions turn up at the same time?

Come on, one of you guys could have the fun of rewriting an entire OS in C in a way that will magically continue to run existing apps on a completely different architecture! What’s not to like? 😋🤣

than RO Direct, and I’d forgotten how… sparse it is.

I started with a Direct download and aborted when I saw how big it was. Is it an archive? Is it an image file? Is there a way to extract stuff of interest from it without having to set up a replacement OS? [as I already have numerous things set up just how I like it, including directories in Apps]

See AndyR’s rant about it over on IconBar

Lost credibility at this:

This system image does not recognise USB media, and the included package managers only offer packages to permit the transfer of files from YOUR thirty something AUN / Econet file server."

Firstly, ShareFS is a rather useful (and RISC OS friendly – understands filetypes) way to get information off of other machines.

Secondly, I’d like to see him get a regular Pi communicating with an MDFS or FileStore, so that part of the rant is gibberish (and I think missing the words “year old”).

Thirdly, maybe USB media won’t work if you try a 64GB device formatted exfat, but I have used USB sticks in both FAT32 and FileCore format. Plug ‘em in, an icon appears, it’s really about that simple.

And yes, the basic image is sparse and a bit stupid having it be only 2GB these days… but there’s PackMan and Store and NetSurf and that’s like 99% of what I used to set up my system.

The rant was very lol worthy, but lacking in accuracy. And if you have a FileStore to which you can’t remember the password you set in 1993, has FSUser that isn’t SYST, and somehow the NVRAM battery is still good… Maybe I can be of assistance? https://heyrick.eu/econet/fs/access.html
I even have a way that works with an MDFS! https://heyrick.eu/econet/mdfs/access.html

I think the IconBar rant (which I was involved in!) was a tad unfair. It turns out if you use RISC OS Pi, then you have enough out-of-the-box to run PackMan and/or Store and obtain other delights. Even some classic games via JASPP.

The bit I don’t quite get now is how the WiFi drivers are a separate (RISC OS format) download, which needs to be applied onto 5.30. So you would probably need an Ethernet connection first, or messing about with a USB stick, to get the WiFi working. Feels like that could be smoothed out – but I appreciate that the WiFi stuff is very much beta, and there could even be licensing complications in the driver code.

How I see the ROOL WiFi is a glimpse of what can be done when the earlier TCP/IP stack bounty isn’t complete. If you recall, the original proposal was to modernise the core first, then worry about WiFi. So annoyances like the DHCP timeout and reboot-to-reconfigure would all be solved. What someone has kindly done to date is to accelerate the WiFi part, and just live with the underlying rough edges. Hopefully when the first TCP/IP bounty delivers, things will be a lot cleaner.

I get the impression the ROD WiFi/stack has been going a while longer, so you would expect it to be further ahead.

The bit I don’t quite get now is how the WiFi drivers are a separate (RISC OS format) download, which needs to be applied onto 5.30. So you would probably need an Ethernet connection first, or messing about with a USB stick, to get the WiFi working. Feels like

How would you upgrade an existing install of RISC OS if it wasn’t a separate download.

If using RPi Imager, PartMgr 1.03 or downloading the RISC OS Pi image manually it’s already included.

I have not been able to run Wifi (either stack) with IRIS browser for extended periods. IRIS will often lock up, the mouse cursor can still be moved but everything is unresponsive. I am not sure if this is a crash with IRIS or the IRQ ‘Race condition’ that has been mentioned elsewhere.

I’ve not noticed any stability problems with Iris using ROOL WiFi. This is with a 2.4GHz overclock. I’m not using SDFS but NVMeFS instead.

I did get the problem after setting up a new SD card. The lock up happened when using PackMan a few minutes after boot up. Only the mouse moves. Alt-break did nothing until a Ctrl-Break then showed the prompt. RISC OS then completely locked requiring a power cycle.

This implies using SDFS and WiFi together increases the chances of it happening.

I have not been able to run Wifi (either stack) with IRIS browser for extended periods. IRIS will often lock up, the mouse cursor can still be moved but everything is unresponsive. I am not sure if this is a crash with IRIS or the IRQ ‘Race condition’ that has been mentioned elsewhere.

Have you ensured to have Alignment Exceptions Turned off ? IRIS needs them turned off due to it using Thump2 technology, if they are not turned off you will get an increased chance of lockups.

How would you upgrade an existing install of RISC OS if it wasn’t a separate download.

My (massive) assumption was that you would need RISC OS 5.30 to get started with WiFi. So the simple option is for it to be baked into the 5.30 HardDisc4 so it will be included/updated by default. Or is it included in the RISC OS Pi distribution? As it only supports Pis at the moment, that would make some sort of sense.

My (massive) assumption was that you would need RISC OS 5.30 to get started with WiFi. So the simple option is for it to be baked into the 5.30 HardDisc4 so it will be included/updated by default. Or is it included in the RISC OS Pi distribution?

ROOL’s WiFi is indeed present in the RISC OS Pi image.

I have just started that image with WiFi only. With no ethernet cable present after the RPi4 booted the WiFi interface needed to be configured. The pi reboots and WiFi can be joined. A further reboot was then required for DHCP to do its stuff. (IIRC in the wired case interface and DHCP setup is automatic.)

As an after thought I checked the welcome/html and the WiFi method is there.

So the simple option is for it to be baked into the 5.30 HardDisc4 so it will be included/updated by default.

Surely the HardDisk4 is generic, whilst the wifi is Pi specific, therefore it being separate is more logical.

Surely the HardDisk4 is generic, whilst the wifi is Pi specific, therefore it being separate is more logical.

True, but I don’t see the harm in some modules in the disk image not (yet) being useful for other machines. It’s much more convenient if things are ‘just there’.

However, it seems that the simple answer is to start with RISC OS Pi. I suppose the official 5.30 release doesn’t include WiFi, as that is somewhat unfinished, so it wouldn’t make sense for it to be in any official RISC OS release. Maybe in time for 5.32?

However, it seems that the simple answer is to start with RISC OS Pi. I suppose the official 5.30 release doesn’t include WiFi

It does.

[Edited to add first sentence to quote]

It does

Not in ROM, which is where it needs to reside for “out-of-box” support.

It does.

Really? In the ROM image and HardDisc4? I actually upgraded my Pi to 5.30 and didn’t spot it – maybe I didn’t look hard enough. Pretty sure the Pi WiFi firmware blobs were only in the additional beta download too.

If it was part of 5.30, I’d expect it to be much more finished – source and all. What we have looks like a jolly interesting technology preview. Hopefully with 5.30 out of the way, some updates for things like the TCP/IP stack itself can start rolling in to the nightlies.

If it was part of 5.30, I’d expect it to be much more finished – source and all. What we have looks like a jolly interesting technology preview. Hopefully with 5.30 out of the way, some updates for things like the TCP/IP stack itself can start rolling in to the nightlies.

Or ROOL could stop wasting their time, and other people’s money, and just use the ROD stack instead.