WIFI not working on fresh archlinux ARM installation

Question

I have a fresh installation of Archlinux ARM (7 or 8; tried both) on my Raspberry PI 3 Model B V1.2 but for some reason the WIFI does not work...

I created the file /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf with the following content:

ctrl_interface=DIR=/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=wheel
update_config=1

When I now start wpa_supplicant everything looks fine...

wpa_supplicant -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant

...but it isn't working:

[root@pi ~]# wpa_cli 
wpa_cli v2.6
Copyright (c) 2004-2016, Jouni Malinen <j@w1.fi> and contributors

This software may be distributed under the terms of the BSD license.
See README for more details.


Selected interface 'p2p-dev-wlan0'

Interactive mode

> scan
OK
> 
> scan_results 
bssid / frequency / signal level / flags / ssid

So, as you can see, no results here.

What am I missing? What do I have to configure else?

Answer 1

In /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf you have to configure at least one network you want to connect to, for example something like but with your settings:

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

network={
    ssid="RPiNet"
    psk="verySecretPassword"
}

Check if your wifi device works with:

rpi ~$ sudo iw dev wlan0 info
rpi ~$ sudo iw dev wlan0 scan

You should get some info about your interface and a list of wifi networks from your neighbors.

Answer 2

Ok. Now I got it to work with netctl although I never really found out the reason for the issues with wpa_supplicant. But I want to share what I learned...

• The country=XY setting is very important.
• The interface might be disabled and must be enabled using ip link set dev wlan0 up.
• One of the biggest problem in my case was (more or less unrelated to the issues above) that SSID broadcast was disabled on my access point for 2.4 GHz. I had it enabled for 5 GHz, so I thought my network is not hidden, but in fact it was hidden for my Raspberry Pi 3, because it only supports 2.4 GHz.