Libra Kobo Libra Colour can't see 5GHz networks

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by Cootey

As I stated, I know how to enable dev mode and turning it on doesn't enable Telnet access. The results I gave you were *with* dev mode on. So you've done something else to enable telnet. I cannot telnet into my Kobo without using that Nickelmenu hack.

Oh, sorry. I misread your post. Maybe Kobo has increased the security level on the current firmware? Developer mode has always been enough by itself to enable telnet for me on 4.35 and earlier.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Oh, sorry. I misread your post. Maybe Kobo has increased the security level on the current firmware? Developer mode has always been enough by itself to enable telnet for me on 4.35 and earlier.

I see. I’ll have to try that on my daughter’s Clara HD. It doesn’t have nm installed.

Do you happen to know the login info for the new devices? I think you posted something about it elsewhere, but I can’t find it.

[Lys]

Originally Posted by Rid

I have had problems like this before - not ereader related and it chose the older protocol because it worked. Doesn't "I switched my network to 2.4-5GHz" just mean, the device auto selected the network that worked?? Which was probably not 5GHZ, even though the dialogue said it was?

Maybe, I didn't dig any further, because both my home network and my smartphone hotspot are set to 2.4-5 GHz and I didn't have any issue during Kobo set-up.

(On the other hand, my old Libra H2O has not been able to connect to my home wifi since I switched router/network several months ago, whereas it connects without problem to my smartphone one. I thought the problem was the name of my home network. Libra Colour managed to connect to it without any issue.)

[Rid]

Originally Posted by Lys

Maybe, I didn't dig any further, because both my home network and my smartphone hotspot are set to 2.4-5 GHz and I didn't have any issue during Kobo set-up.

(On the other hand, my old Libra H2O has not been able to connect to my home wifi since I switched router/network several months ago, whereas it connects without problem to my smartphone one. I thought the problem was the name of my home network. Libra Colour managed to connect to it without any issue.)

Maybe log into the router and test each option separately to see if any of them do work with the LIbra 2?

Oh don't forget to delete\forget all wifi connections in you Libra 2 before trying to connect.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Rid

Maybe log into the router and test each option separately to see if any of them do work with the LIbra 2?

Oh don't forget to delete\forget all wifi connections in you Libra 2 before trying to connect.

You don't have to forget anything. The simple solution is to make guest accounts in the router so you can make a different SSID/PW for each band.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Cootey

Well, whatever the reason why I can't telnet without Nickelmenu is, I've reinstalled Nickelmenu and have telnet access to the Kobo again. The problem is that I don't know the password for root. It appears that they've changed it from " ", which always struck me as a tad lazy anyway. Anybody know the new login so I can check on the wifi card stats as originally suggested?

Try using 'admin/admin' instead of 'root/.'.

[Aleron Ives]

Originally Posted by Cootey

Do you happen to know the login info for the new devices? I think you posted something about it elsewhere, but I can’t find it.

Nope, that wasn't me. I only have a Libra 2, and I stayed on 4.35 to avoid the database corruption problems introduced in 4.37.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by DNSB

Try using 'admin/admin' instead of 'root/.'.

Thank you. That did the trick. When you first login, you get the warning that you see at the top of the screenshot. Since I’m finally in, I’m going to look into the Wi-Fi card issue first before worrying about the warning.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

I would enable developer mode and then try the advice in this article over telnet:

https://unix.stackexchange.com/quest...supports-5-ghz

The Libra 2 doesn't support 5 GHz, so it would be rather concerning if the Libra Colour doesn't either, despite the advertised specifications...

To get back on track to your original suggestion after quite the journey, I can report the following:



According to comments in that article from 2014, iwlist is considered old and has been replaced with iw, which is not installed on the Kobo. I’ll put a pin in that one for now, but you can clearly see that I’ve connected at 5 GHz.

The question is, what did I do to fix it? All I did was reboot a few times as I removed nickelmenu, and then I added nm back. I also did a database repair. None of those are related to Wi-Fi. Initially, I blamed the correlation of sluggish and forgetful Wi-Fi troubles to nm because the problems went away when I removed nm. I also had troubles with the Libra Colour intermittently not mounting on my iMac. That has also cleared up. Perhaps the several cold power cycles that I did repaired whatever issue was at fault.

I appreciate everybody’s detailed feedback, as well as your willingness to educate me on new aspects of Linux without being snide. I wish I could definitively point to what I did to fix this issue to be of use for others who come upon this thread.

If you have any questions for me, I’ll try to answer them.

[Aleron Ives]

Interesting! I wonder why the channel list does not contain any 5 GHz entries. If you're really connected at 5 GHz, you'd think that there would be a 5 GHz channel in the list. Are you running both 2.4 and 5 GHz, or did you disable 2.4 GHz for testing purposes?

As far as commands go, Kobo uses BusyBox, so you're limited to the commands it supports, unlike with a full Linux distro. Thankfully, at least iwlist is available for diagnosing this.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Oh, sorry. I misread your post. Maybe Kobo has increased the security level on the current firmware? Developer mode has always been enough by itself to enable telnet for me on 4.35 and earlier.

Now that I provided the information you originally suggested that I look for, I turned my attention to my Kobo Elipsa to see if I could login via telnet. I had recently logged back into my main account on it after using my Japanese account, so dev mode had not been reenabled yet. The nm installation had persisted between accounts, however.

1) Attempting to telnet into the Elipsa with neither dev mode nor telnet through nm enabled failed, as expected.
2) Turning dev mode on did not allow me to telnet into the Elipsa. As far as I know, this has always been the case for me. That’s why I looked into nm in the first place years ago. I am running firmware 4.38.21908
3) Enabling telnet via nm allowed me to successfully telnet into the Elipsa

Then for giggles, I enabled sideloaded mode. After successfully entering that mode, and with devmode enabled, I still could not telnet unless I enabled telnet via nm. I don’t have a Kobo with the earlier firmware installed on it, and I have saturated on this particular problem, so I’m unlikely to downgrade my Elipsa’s firmware to compare. at least not today.

I hope my descriptions were thorough enough for you to follow along.

Now, to get this back on topic, here are the iwconfig & iwlist results for my Elipsa.




Notice the full list of channels compared to the Libra Colour’s results. I wonder if there is something here to point to this intermittent WiFi connectivity issue.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by Aleron Ives

Interesting! I wonder why the channel list does not contain any 5 GHz entries. If you're really connected at 5 GHz, you'd think that there would be a 5 GHz channel in the list. Are you running both 2.4 and 5 GHz, or did you disable 2.4 GHz for testing purposes?

As far as commands go, Kobo uses BusyBox, so you're limited to the commands it supports, unlike with a full Linux distro. Thankfully, at least iwlist is available for diagnosing this.

I didn’t see your reply because I was busy working up my Elipsa entry. As you see above, I also wonder about why there are no 5 GHz channels showing up in the Kobo Libra Colour list. I can’t help but think that this is related, but it’s a bit outside of my skill set.

Are you running both 2.4 and 5 GHz, or did you disable 2.4 GHz for testing purposes?

No, I didn’t. Could you tell me how to do that? If you mean on the router, I can figure that out. I have an older apple airport on a subnet from a Netgear Wi-Fi six network which is upstairs. The Netgear multi broadcasts one channel which is capable of both 2.4 and 5 GHz. The Apple airport has two separate networks for 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz. Initially, the Libra Colour couldn’t even see the 5Ghz network, nor could it join manually. I haven’t tested with the Netgear network bc it’s spotty from my bedroom.

If you mean on the Kobo, I’ll need a bit of guidance.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Cootey

Now, to get this back on topic, here are the iwconfig & iwlist results for my Elipsa.

Attachment 208088
Attachment 208089

Notice the full list of channels compared to the Libra Colour’s results. I wonder if there is something here to point to this intermittent WiFi connectivity issue.

Nothing shows up for your results.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Nothing shows up for your results.

I’m not sure what to say, Jon. They show up for me in Tapatalk and in a web browser. They are attached as I’ve been instructed to do instead of using Tapatalk to post pictures inline.

Do you have an ad blocker running? I have a CSS ad blocker sheet that I use that often treats attached images as ads. I have to disable it in order to see them.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Cootey

I’m not sure what to say, Jon. They show up for me in Tapatalk and in a web browser. They are attached as I’ve been instructed to do instead of using Tapatalk to post pictures inline.

Do you have an ad blocker running? I have a CSS ad blocker sheet that I use that often treats attached images as ads. I have to disable it in order to see them.

Very odd. Now they do show up.