How do I get WiFi support?

Can anyone tell me how to see if my HAOS installation is seeing the new WiFi (Intel card) that I have put into my HP T620? I tested it under Windows and Ubuntu 23.

I had to restore to this system from a FULL BACKUP, and after waiting nearly 2 hours for the restore to complete - I am back in.

I see nowhere in the settings >> network do I see the WiFi. Does that mean that HA does not see it?

Everything that I have been reading is that Broadcom wifi cards/chipsets have problem with HAOS - so I got an Intel card (wifi 6E). Under normal Linux, I know how to check these things - but with the HA CLI page - I cannot find any of that information.

Hi,

From your posting history, I’d suggest you know the difference between HAOS / Container / Supervised so you can guess where this might lead…

I don’t know the Broadcom issue specifically (avoided them since about Slackware on CD!), and only know the architecture of Docker, so there might be a way, but I’d suggest HAOS isn’t looking like good a good option.

Different WLAN adapter perhaps? Wired Ethernet?

Swapping hardware might be easier than the sysadmin effort.

start by typing

ha net inf … and read all (it’s helpful) :wink: … In the bottom you’ll find “wifi” … if it says null , you have to try to go “deeper” :slight_smile:

PS: I run in a VM and have chose Not To Add Wifi, 1 A server should Not run over wifi. 2 You’ll get problems, which will be hard to “solve/figure out”, if you have both Wifi and Ethernet 3. i could go on here, but i guess you have a “valid” reason to add Wifi , so with this in mind i also assume you can Navigate through the HA-Cli , … after every command/subccommand you can type --help ( or -h )

EDIT: And in Settings/System/Network & Hardware(show all) you find more info about your system

I had tried that - and I got this…which is what prompted me to post the question. It is like it is not seen. I did a fresh install this AM - and when trying to do the RESTORE of a “FULL” Backup I had taken on Thanksgiving. I chose PARTIAL and checked everything except the HomeAssistant (looked to be the underlying system) option. After letting it sit nearly 2 hours and no HDD activity for quite time time and the webpage still showing “Restoring…” - I rebooted. It came back as if nothing had been done. I did it again, same results.

So that I could get it all back up and running - I did the FULL restore and after about 28 mins - it completed and I rebooted. It was back to the install I had before I began this journey.

The wired Ethernet is the option I am using now…and I had wifi once before with a HAOS install - but the wifi card was only a 150mbs card.

I just find it strange that Ubuntu and Windows (pretty sure that Debian would too) can see it with no problems. I just wanna see (from the base level) - if the Alpine linux that HAOS is based off - can or actually sees it.

And you didn’t found an “option” to choose your wifi card ? , HA is not a “Major” OS distributor, and beside WIFI is not recommended (thou there was actually added support for a few additional WIFI-Cards, in latest Update “as-well” … so maybe your card is not supported
Other “solution” is trying below Docs, but again consider why you want to use WIFI and not Ethernet,
A server which communicate with tons of other wifi devices, on same SSID and which also is a “Hub” to “collect/receive/push” updates constantly to/from these device, will kill your wifi, or your router

Thanks for the link - I had looked at that, but I got nowhere. It mentions to type ‘login’ at the ha> prompt and to login as ‘root’ with no password. This does not work. I cannot get the ‘nmcli’ command to work either…it does show me the connection properties of the ‘current’ active connection.

I want to see with the ‘RESTORED’ system I have, if it is even seeing the wifi card.

While I know wifi is not recommended, I want it there as a backup. NONE, of my SmartHome devices are WiFi - they are all Z-Wave or ZigBee. Not really worried about a wifi overload.

I am simply trying to get the hardware information…much like the lspci or lsusb commands in Linux. While I am no Linux guru, I know enough of the basic commands to fumble my way into finding things.

As I found these which show me the Linux version of the CLI shell (I am assuming):

The ‘ifconfig’ command shows me the following - and about 16 other veth??? adapters (assuming those are virtual adapters for the other containers/Dockers within HA for the Integrations I have installed):

For example in Debian you can use ‘nano /etc/network/interfaces’ and get some sort of idea of the interfaces…which I guess the ‘ifconfig’ command above gave me - but I am trying to see if the WiFi card is even identified by the OS (Windows sees it fine, as does Ubuntu {what I used to install HA to the system with the ‘restore image’ process}).

I also just noticed that the Bluetooth on the WiFi card appears to be detected - I just noticed I now have 2 Bluetooth ‘devices’

image

The configured one is a USB Bluetooth dongle ‘inside’ the case of the HP T620 - which has always worked.

You are running an old version of both HA OS and HA core.
The latest version of HA OS has a lot of extra netcard drivers included, so try upgrading to that version.

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Thanks - but not at all what I am looking to do at this moment. I have already read too many horror stories of others that upgraded - and either lost most of their setup or had it drastically changed.

I do not currently have any ‘dashboards’ created - to the cards option to me is nil.

However that is exactly what You SHOULD do, as i indicated, and Wally was very clear about !
Complaining about “Driver issues” on a Windows Vista ( for your NEW wifi-card ), when latest Windows is Windows 10, is kind of ridicules , Update your OS, If there is still no support for your new-wifi card, You could open a FR

In Regards to your previous Topic, 6 days ago , Same advice as Wally gave You

You could have saved " Habitats Tech " some “wasted” time by telling what you actually was Running, which would have told him which OLD backup you was trying to apply to a NEW Fresh install …mission impossible

The WiFi card issue is secondary to the RESTORE issue. That was a different issue where I was trying to perform a restore to the same machine that it had been running on - I had not yet added the WiFi card. That was a second-thought as the on-board NIC was not working. I spent some time with HP and after putting Windows and Debian and Ubuntu all on the box - and all of them saw the NIC - it was determined that it was ‘not’ the hardware. That is when I did the load of the latest HAOS and tried to do a PARTIAL RESTORE from my FULL BACKUP - but only restoring the folders and the integrations (all of which are always at the latest version)…that the RESTORE would not work.

If I did the FULL RESTORE - which I did Tuesday this week back to the system, things now seem to be working in the state it was “when I took the FULL BACKUP” - so I have a working HA again.

Nowhere is it mentioned that you cannot do a PARTIAL RESTORE to the ‘latest/greatest’ HAOS and it not work. I have begun recording and copying some of the stuff off the HA I have working now - as there does not seem to be a way to pull anything off which shows all the configuration data for everything (like an .SML file or something). I am taking screen shots, and recording passwords, API Keys, etc. so that I can build it all again from scratch. I will install the latest version I have downloaded {haos_generic-x86-64-11.1.img.xz} and start rebuilding it all from scratch. Then I will have a fresh/clean/virgin installation and can see if everything works.

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Yeah, sometimes hard work is required, but that’s your best approach, Alot have change lately, on OS level and Core, but also in Supervisor, as well as many Integrations had to “Adapt” to these changes ( so they “many” have also been updated lately ), Most likely the reson why you couldn’t apply a backup from May, to Latest
I.e Support for Python version ( Valid in May) was removed in 2023.10 i think or 11.

Normally it’s not so often that Major changes occur on i.e OS level, but when it does there is no way around :slight_smile: , Hope there is support for your Wifi card in latest OS-Version, If not you could open a FR, if it’s a common Intel, it should most like be “approved”, but check out OS-11.2 first

I appreciate your hanging with me - it is frustrating to many of us. I realize that HA is pretty much ‘open-source’ and not a “paid” product. They have done a lot with it in the 2 years I have been using it.

My biggest gripe with it, even given the ‘extensive’ online help stuff - is much of it is skeletal at best. Meaning it assumes that the person reading it has been working in Linux world for 5-10+ years or in HA.

I wish I had the time to write a kindergarten level guide - :rofl: with lots of pictures.

I really want to ‘virtualize’ the whole HA setup - and do MariaDB in own container, Z2W and such as well. I had tried this (see image) - but was having issues with USB passthrough for my ZW and ZB dongles.

image

Found many of these a big help: Proxmox VE Helper-Scripts | Scripts for Streamlining Your Homelab with Proxmox VE

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You can aswell copy your yaml-files “old” Views/Dashboards, cards etc, if they are extensive, it could save you lots of hours work.

I have no dashboards yet - not gotten that far into it. I have been trying to get everything to work. Namely my SAMSUNG SmartAppliances. I have tried all sorts of things, and I can get them “IN” HA - but not really do anything with them.

The strangest one was someone advised that each appliance needed its own SmartThings login (email). Which made absolutely no sense. How would I ever get them to do that?

When I make a backup - I make two from the GUI - FULL backup and stored in 2 different locations (one my personal computer and the other my NAS). Well I download it 2x. lol

I also have the SMB addon installed and I copy all of these to an external drive any a folder on my PC (granted only backup, config and ssl actually copy, as the others have nothing in them).

This time I am also taking some screen shots of some pages - so that ‘hopefully’ I can rebuild from scratch (for the most part) on a brand new install, and get everything working again.

Just wanted to share with you. I finally did ALL UPDATES to HA - OS and CORE. When it rebooted from the OS update…guess what!!!

My WiFi 6E card in my HP ThinClient was showing as there…and I was able to connect to my home’s WiFi and get an IP address. I tested it by powering OFF, unplugging Ethernet, powering ON and ouila. I was still able to get into it. (I had to make a change to my Firewall to allow the new IP Address) - but that was easy. Now I have a DHCP reservation for both (W & WL) in my pfSense - and FW NAT Rules. I can use either.

image

As A BONUS…this Wireless Card also has Bluetooth 5.3, and it was detected too and allowed me to remove the Bluetooth Dongle. Whoop! Whoop!

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