I’ve just installed Home Assistant on a thin client PC, and while everything else is running smoothly it’s refusing to detect wifi. I really need to be able to connect this thing to wifi so that I can detatch the 50ft cat6 running through my living room, and I’m kind of at my wit’s end.
Any help would be deeply appreciated.
Some notes:
I’ve seen a number of previous troubleshooting posts and articles mention nmcli radio as the command to detect wifi, but that just returns “Error: unknown command ‘nmcli’ for ‘ha’”.
When I try network scan wifi it returns “Error: Interface wifi does not exist”. However, my wifi is definitely working without error, and the hardware successfully detected (and connected to) wifi when it was a Windows machine and an Ubuntu machine before I installed Home Assistant.
I’m sure this is a case of user error, but I’ve exhausted everything I know to do.
However, if the WiFi chip on that thin client PC gets correctly detected with Windows and Ubuntu it does not necessarily mean there are drivers available with Alpine Linux (where HA OS is based on).
Please be more precise and if possible show logfile snippets.
Additionally please read the following to get better support from the community:
It’s clear that you’re much more technical than I am, and I’m sorry that my lack of pro tech skills seems to be the reason I might not get assistance (but of course it’s why I need assistance).
I’ll try to answer what I can. I did install the HA OS on an OptiPlex 7050, and I did confirm that the wifi was detecting/connecting without issue before the Home Assistant installation. That would indicate to me that wifi is not switched off in BIOS.
I did include commands I used and the errors they returned in my post. I’m sorry that they’re not formatted as code snippets, but I’m posting from mobile and the editor doesn’t seem to have a “code snippet” formatting option.
Additionally, if I have broken any other community rules that may mean that people won’t be inclined to help me please don’t hesitate to let me know. I did read the post you shared (common practice when joining any community forum) and I’m not sure what I’m in violation of but I’m happy to learn.
You have not broken any rules. It’s just the sparse information you have given makes it hard to tell where the issues with WiFi could be coming from and hard for the community to provide support. The more detailed your support request(s) is/are the better the chances the community can help.
The OptiPlex 7050 Micro/Tower has Intel Dual-Band Wireless-AC 8265 Wi-Fi build-in where the necessary drivers should already be available with HA OS.
Do you have the following Home Assistant Community Add-on (Advanced SSH & Web Terminal) installed?
If the above is not installed please use this in favor of the provided SSH add-on by Home Assistant.
After it is installed make sure you have disabled “Protection Mode” on the SSH addon. This will give you full control over the OS including access to ‘nmcli’ (which usually resides in /usr/bin).
However, HAOS has its own network manager and using nmcli can cause conflicts, causing further issues. On how to configure WiFi on your HA OS you might want to check THIS GUIDE.
I did not realize I could change that setting “remotely” from the app (vs “locally” via the CLI). Thank you for this very clear push in the right direction!
Thanks to you I did find and change those settings, and everything seemed great! Until it wasn’t.
Wifi settings were saved, and now when I check my network settings via CLI they’re more confusing than anything - which I’m taking as a step in the right direction.
ha network scan wifi
still returns the same “Error: Interface wifi does not exist”. However
network info
now shows my wifi information (hooray!). And I did feel hooray about it until I unplugged the Ethernet (trusting the wifi) and lost remote connectivity. The machine is still up and running, CLI is still happy as a clam, scanning the network still returns the same results, but now I can’t connect remotely to my Home Assistant.
Is it something obvious to pros but opaque to the uninitiated, like wifi would give me a different IP address to connect to?
The guide you shared from GitHub is fascinating! It does look like it contains the information I need, and as soon as I can find another article that explains how to apply that knowledge I’ll try what it recommends.
Thank you for pointing me in that direction! There’s so much information out there it can be incredibly daunting and discouraging for a beginner (like me). Your patience is greatly appreciated, and is encouraging me to keep trying.