Octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt does not affect wifi

Hello
I have the problem here if I setup octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt with the right wpa ssid and psk
and the correct country, it does not connect to the wifi.

If I set it up via raspi-config wifi works normally

What is the regular behaviour of the octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt.
Does it only updated the /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf during first boot up?
or if I enable wifi to a later moment it does not work any more?!

do I always have to modify ever after the wpa_supplicant.conf if I change something on the wifi

I have 0.17 and 1.6.1 Installed

/boot/octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt is symlinked to /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf on fresh octopi installs.

Did you check if that is still the case on your box?

To do so, ssh into the raspi that is your print host and give this command:

ls -la /etc/wpa_supplicant/

symlinks are shown with an -> arrow pointing to the source

The config used when starting up is actually taken from /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf.
So, if the latter is a normal file, (and not symlinked to /boot/octopi-wpa-supplicant.txt) then one is valid and the other ignored.

Not sure if that explains what you described but worth a check.

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Thanks for answering I do understand the concept of links,.
but I checked two different boxes one with 0.17 1.6.1 and and a new 0.18 install.
On both I checked vise versa if there is a symlink to the other file (octpi-wpa.. and wpa_supp..)
Both show up the same problem there are two separate files no link from one to the other. see picture.


So I dont know how this can happen, cause it may happen on one but not on both.
Could others check if they have the symlink? Which one is linked to which one?
As I am not an expert can this link be reastablished?
thanks in advance

while I have no idea how that may have occured on your boxes I don't think it is a problem once you realise which file actually is used to configure the wpa-supplicant..

Symlinking the config file from /etc/... to /boot/... is something I saw on no other linux distro but octopi. I absolutely can not speak for octopi but I guess it was done to make it easier to edit those settings before first boot for users on a system that can not mount ext4 partitions (i.e. win* - users)

Now, as the shot (thanks!) shows you've booted your boxes and know how to use putty and so you can simply put your config into the file that holds the wifi config normally.

In fact that was about the first thing I did after setting up a fresh install of octopi 18 on my print host cause for me said symlink is a possible source of confusion.

If you want to create a symlink from the command line, the syntax is:
ln -s source target
man ln has all the details.

best regards

The symlink does usually exist, and I can see it both on my installs and on a never-booted image download. OctoPi did headless WiFi config before it was cool, and it has remained doing it this way.

I can't tell you how you might have broken the link here, but as you've found out it definitely doesn't seem to exist on your installs.

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Ok thank you very much good to hear, I will have an eye on it and will have another testinstallation to check.
Thanks all for the information, helping and clarifying !

I have found if you set any of the wifi info via raspi-config, it breaks the link and creates the standalone file of /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

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Did anyone file a bug report on this on OctoPi yet? Because I distinctly remember putting in some code a couple years ago that was supposed to prevent this from happening and either that got somehow removed or Raspbian changed something so it stopped working. Either way, it should continue to work, of it doesn't that's a bug.

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Great, thanks will take that into consideration

Have a nice day


I just put the command line that you show 'ls -l /etc/wp_supplicant/' and I get the same readout as you show. I guess that means that the file is read yet I still can't download/connect to/from github. Is there a way to check if the internet is connected?

Try with ls -l /etc/wpa_supplicant

The a was missing

Is there anything I can do to fix this