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I'm completely stuck. I have Raspberry Pi Zero W and I'm trying to get the built-in Wi-Fi to work. After a clean install of 2017-08-16 Raspbian Stretch, when I click on the Wi-Fi button in the top right screen, it says "no wireless interface found". When I do lsmod, I see:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ lsmod
Module                  Size  Used by
bluetooth             374820  0
fuse                   94600  3
cfg80211              525806  0
rfkill                 21373  3 bluetooth,cfg80211
evdev                  11746  1
snd_bcm2835            23131  1
snd_pcm                97825  1 snd_bcm2835
snd_timer              22706  1 snd_pcm
snd                    68784  5 snd_timer,snd_bcm2835,snd_pcm
bcm2835_gpiomem         3791  0
uio_pdrv_genirq         3718  0
uio                    10166  1 uio_pdrv_genirq
fixed                   3029  0
i2c_dev                 6642  0
ip_tables              12512  0
x_tables               20921  1 ip_tables
ipv6                  384532  14

So if I'm correct, that suggests that the Wi-Fi module is loaded. But when I do ifconfig -a, I see:

pi@raspberrypi:~ $ ifconfig
lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536
        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0
        inet6 ::1  prefixlen 128  scopeid 0x10<host>
        loop  txqueuelen 1  (Local Loopback)
        RX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        RX errors 0  dropped 0  overruns 0  frame 0
        TX packets 0  bytes 0 (0.0 B)
        TX errors 0  dropped 0 overruns 0  carrier 0  collisions 0

Which suggests that I'm missing a driver. But if I'm correct the driver for the build in chip should be built-in to Raspbian. I also tried some other hopeless things like adding my SSID and password to the wpa_supplicant.conf file and doing the same thing on Stretch Lite and 2017-07-05 Jessie and Jessie lite. Plus I tried placing my SD card in old Raspberry Pi 1 and updating and upgrading all packages with:

 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get upgrade

None of that worked. Do I have a broken chip or am I just missing something?

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  • What is the output from ifconfig -a?
    – MatsK
    Sep 7, 2017 at 21:43
  • I'm having the same problem as you, I already have a topic in the official Raspberry forum and also a topic in reddit. If you find out something please let me know! Reddit:<reddit.com/r/raspberry_pi/comments/6yzdys/…> RaspberryPi Forum:<raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=192665>
    – andresichelero
    Sep 9, 2017 at 8:17
  • From lsmod results there doesn't seem to be any wireless adapter. A wireless-enabled Pi Zero must look exactly like this (front side) and this (back side). Pay attention to the triangle-shaped antenna on the front side.
    – user29510
    Oct 12, 2017 at 9:38

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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The command ifconfig is only showing interfaces that are up.

If you append a -a, ifconfig -a it will show ALL interfaces, also the interfaces that are down.

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  • Thank you Mats, I tried ifconfig -a but I still only see the loopback interface
    – martijns
    Sep 8, 2017 at 5:37
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    @martijns Just a double check, on the backside of the Raspberry Pi Z W below the raspberry is there a text "Uses antenna tech...."?
    – MatsK
    Sep 9, 2017 at 5:14
  • There is also the commands lspciand lsusb that will list devices on either the PCI and the USB bus.
    – MatsK
    Sep 9, 2017 at 5:32
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Same problem on a unit I bought a while back. Today I bought another Pi Zero W only to have the same problem with it. Poking around on the web I found a post where somebody recommended using PiBakery. This lets you preconfigure an image on a PC or Mac then write it to the SD card (including the WiFi SSID and password). I did this, and it worked. I'm up and running on both cards now.

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I ordered a new raspberry pi zero w last week and today I placed the sd card I used in my old pi in this new one and the wifi worked right away. So I guess I just had bad luck and received a broken unit.

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  • Please accept your own answer with a click on the tick on its left side. Only this will finish the question and it will not pop up again year for year.
    – Ingo
    Mar 16, 2020 at 9:04
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Create a new file called wpa_supplicant.conf on the boot directory containing the following text:

country=AU
ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
network={
    ssid="MyWiFiNetwork"
    psk="aVeryStrongPassword"
    key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}

Do not use notepad if editing the file on a windows PC. Use something like Notepad++.

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