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I am trying to set up wireless on my Raspberry Pi 3 using Jessie version (no GUI)

I have tried setting up wifi by editing /etc/network/interfaces and using the wpa_passphrase command as follows

wpa_passphrase MySSID password | sudo tee -a /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

but whenever I try to bring up the device wlan0 with sudo ifup --force wlan0 I get the following error:

wpa_supplicant: /sbin/wpa_supplicant daemon failed to start
run-parts: /etc/network/if-pre-up.d/wpasupplicant exited with return code 1
Failed to bring up wlan0.

When I check the syslog I see the following.

Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
nl80211: 'nl80211' generic netlink not found
Failed to initialize driver 'nl80211'
rfkill: Cannot open RFKILL control device
Could not read interface wlan0 flags: No such device
WEXT: Could not set interface 'wlan0' UP
rfkill: Cannot open RFKILL control device
Could not read interface wlan0 flags: No such device
WEXT: Could not set interface 'wlan0' UP
wlan0: Failed to initialize driver interface

It even comes up when I try to set power management off on the raspberry pi

I am assuming the nl80211 driver is missing, but I cannot find any explanation on how to fix this issue. How do I install the driver?

Tich
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2 Answers2

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I think the issue is that you're using the wrong driver, not that it's missing. Try running, 

sudo wpa_supplicant -B -Dwext -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf -iwlan0

This will use the wext driver instead of the nl80211 driver. You can read more by using the "man wpa_supplicant" command. If the command succeeds it should output something like:

Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
ioctl[blablabla]: invalid argument
ioctl[blablabla]: invalid argument

If you get a message like that ^ You should be able to connect to your wifi by running

sudo dhclient wlan0

I got most of this information from: http://linuxcommando.blogspot.com/2013/10/how-to-connect-to-wpawpa2-wifi-network.html

Check out that source if you run into additional problems. If the guide doesn't help, let us know what went wrong.

Note: I still can't get my rPi3 to connect to wifi on boot, but I'll edit this when I do.

I hope this helps.

Jon
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I had a similar problem, turned out I just needed to prepend the 'sudo'

sudo wpa_supplicant -Dnl80211 -iwlan0 -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf

To obtain IP addresses I then typed

sudo dhcpcd
Skyfish
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