Why does adding a 2nd network in wpa_supplicant.conf break my wifi connection to Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W?

Question

Following this answer I added a 2nd WiFi network to wpa_supplicant on my bullseye installation.

There must be something wrong with the configuration as when I reboot the router I am unable to connect to the Raspberry Pi on either network, effectively leaving me no way to connect to the device via SSH.

The configuration I used is:

ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1

network={
    ssid="NETWORK1 NAME"
    psk=<secure version of psk added when configuring pi with imager software>
    id_str=""network_1
}

network={
    ssid="NETWORK2 NAME"
    psk=PASSWORD2
    id_str=""network_2
}

Can anyone see what I've done wrong here?

Answer 1

You have two errors:

First error:

id_str=""network_1

should look like this

id_str="network_1"

And the same for network_2

And the second error:

If you read the first comment on https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/a/40144/149966

This does not appear to work if you specify id= but if you instead specify a priority= for each then it does work. –  Ian Mercer Oct 21, 2020 at 3:37

So add a priority=1 and priority=2 to network_1 and netwwork_2.

Answer 2

There is absolutely no point in attempting to use a 7 year old post for an obsolete OS!

There are OBVIOUS formatting errors in the strings you entered. Even if you corrected the id_str entry it is doubtful that these serve any useful purpose in modern networking.

You have NOT set a country=

See How to set up networking/WiFi