How do I solve extra and missing wifi interfaces?

Question

This is somewhat cosmetic.

Too many IPs: When polling my net, my RPi3 B seems to be broadcasting two IPs, a 'ghost' DHCP one, and my preferred, static one.

"No wireless interfaces found": Also, after upgrading to Stretch, the menu bar appears to have no net connection, and clicking on it, gives that error. However, I'm sending this from that very RPi.

I've done the standard raspi-config, and changed locale settings, that often addresses this kind of thing.

Ideally, I want the static IP, with DHCP as a fallback. Aside from assigning a static IP, the RPi3 B is standard, with no extra net dongle, or other mods.

To get things started, here's my /etc/network/interfaces

Thanks in advance

source-directory /etc/network/interfaces.d
auto wlan0

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

iface eth0 inet dhcp
nameserver 8.8.8.8
name server 8.8.4.4

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
    address 10.0.1.186
    netmask 255.255.255.0
    gateway 10.0.1.1

iface wlan0 inet dhcp
    wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

allow-hotplug wlan1
iface wlan1 inet dhcp
    wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf`

Also, here's the iwconfig:

iwconfig

eth0 no wireless extensions.

lo no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"myNetHere"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.412 GHz Access Point: B8:C7:5D:08:CC:8B
Bit Rate=72.2 Mb/s Tx-Power=31 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:on Link Quality=60/70 Signal level=-50 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0 Tx excessive retries:18 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0

EDIT: The tail from my /etc/dhcpcd.conf

# A ServerID is required by RFC2131.
require dhcp_server_identifier

# Generate Stable Private IPv6 Addresses instead of hardware based ones
slaac private

# A hook script is provided to lookup the hostname if not set by the DHCP
# server, but it should not be run by default.
nohook lookup-hostname

interface wlan0
static ip_address=10.0.1.186/24
static routers=10.0.1.1
static domain_name_servers=8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4

Answer 1

There seems to be a lot wrong with your configuration. Starting with actually setting both a DHCP and static address for wlan0 in interfaces. And I can see at least one typo.

But in Raspbian Stretch things are by default done differently:

1. Remove everything after the first line from /etc/network/interfaces

2. Then add the static info to the end of /etc/dhcpcd.conf (there are examples at the end of that file)

   interface wlan0
   static ip_address=10.0.1.186/24
   static routers=10.0.1.1
   static domain_name_servers=8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4
   

3. If you want to use wlan0 and wlan1 at the same time, but connected to different APs you need two configuration files: /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant_wlan0.conf and /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant_wlan1.conf with the respective credentials

Answer 2

You might want to explain in more detail what you mean by "polling my net"; IP's are not broadcast. So it is unclear whether you think there are two associated with the Pi because:

1. There are two addresses with the pi's hostname responding to mDNS (avahi).
2. There are two addresses being associated with the pi's wifi MAC address.
3. The pi is using a DHCP address, but something is also using the static address you assigned to it.

The first one seems unlikely. The second one I am pretty sure is impossible unless you have a trickster on your WLAN. The third one could easily be the case if you did not configure your router to reserve that address for the Pi. If you just configure a static address on the Pi, this is at best something it will get as a preference. The router will have no reason not to assign that address dynamically to something else when it is not in use. After that, it will not take it away and give it to the Pi just because it is requesting it. This could lead to confusion if you believe configuring it on the pi means that address is always the pi.