Hi Keith,

On 10/14/20 6:52 PM, KeithG wrote:
> I have been struggling with this problem for a while and *think* I have narrowed 
> it down to an Arch Linux problem. My main focus is to get iwd/connman to work on 
> my RPis as iwd connects so much faster when it works. Current versions on Arch 
> Linux are Connman = 1.38 and iwd = 1.9. The kernel I'm running is 5.4.70.
> 
> It does not behave absolutely consistently but there are themes. If I have 
> connman managing the connections, when the SSID goes away, iwd stops scanning. 
> This is very consistent. It does it first time every time. SSID goes down, it 
> disconnects and sits there. On Arch Linux, it does not seem to be dependent on 
> card (broadcom/intel) or hardware (x86_64,armv6/armv7/aarch64). iwd quits 
> scanning when the SSID goes away. The monitor-iwd script shows 'Scanning = 
> False' and it never rescans.

Connman invokes Station.Disconnect() which tells iwd to also not enter into its 
own Autoconnect phase.  I think the idea is for ConnMan to scan periodically, 
but I guess it doesn't do this for whatever reason.

> When I use systemd-networkd with iwd, I get better behavior, but it can also get 
> to a point where it quits scanning. This happens after a few times of turning 
> off then on the AP on the router. When it quits scanning, monitor-iwd says 
> "Scanning = False" and it never rescans. The last time I ran it, the monitor-iwd 
> script says Scanning = True then immediately Scanning = False but nothing was 
> scanned. It did this 13 times but never 'saw' anything nor connected. If I down 
> then up the interface (ifconfig wlan0 down; ifconfig wlan0 up), it immediately 
> connects. I now have a script that runs when the interface goes down to do this 
> (down/up), but shouldn't iwd eventually reconnect?

We would need to see iwd debug logs and iwmon logs to say much more...

https://iwd.wiki.kernel.org/debugging

> 
> This contrasts with the same computer running RasPiOS. It is running the same 
> kernel and the same broadcom firmware (I updated both to be identical) connman 
> is 1.36 and iwd is 0.14, but it works every time all the time. I cannot get it 
> to not reconnect. In fact it connects faster than the web page for the router 
> registers it.
> 
> I built iwd 0.14 and connman 1.36 for the Arch install and it behaves the same 
> as iwd 1.9 or the iwd git master build. It just quits.
> 
> What underlying OS issues could cause this? I have built the kernel with the 
> same config options for both installations with the same computer doing the 
> building. Both installations are using the same kernel, firmware and driver 
> version (built with the kernel).
> 

Hard to say without logs...

Regards,
-Denis