After much research, I believe I have a unique situation. I am using a Raspberry Pi 3B+ with Raspbian 11 (Bullseye). I want to have a two Wi-Fi connections. One that connects to an existing Wi-Fi AP, and another stand alone Wi-Fi network served by the Raspberry Pi that does not need to connect to a WLAN. All the second one needs to do is serve a ROR application. This RPi will be part of, essentially, a stand-alone robot that needs to make it's own wi-fi network in order to interact with users.
I've configured the system to do that at one time using the advice at Access point as WiFi router/repeater with additional WiFi-dongle and related posts. For the readers convenience; this solution involved removing dhcpcd networking and replacing it with systemd networking. This worked, but left me with the situation where I had to constantly switch networks: connect to the RPi and do something, connect to the wlan Wi-Fi to research, switch back and forth, etc. Plus, as I made code changes on the RPi, it was really hard to commit those changes to my git server.
So I thought I would add a Wi-Fi antenna (TP-Link AC1300) and configure the built-in wi-fi (wlan0) to access the WLAN and have the USB antenna configured as wlan1 and create its own isolated network (cleverly named "RPi"). However, I never see wlan1 as an interface.
Here is configuration information:
ifconfig output:
$ ifconfig -a
eth0: flags=4098<BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
ether b8:27:eb:bd:03:08 txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 0 bytes 0 (0.0 B)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING> mtu 65536
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 255.0.0.0
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 scopeid 0x10<host>
loop txqueuelen 1000 (Local Loopback)
RX packets 4 bytes 200 (200.0 B)
RX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 4 bytes 200 (200.0 B)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
wlan0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
inet 192.168.86.36 netmask 255.255.255.0 broadcast 192.168.86.255
inet6 fe80::ba27:ebff:fee8:565d prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x20<link>
ether b8:27:eb:e8:56:5d txqueuelen 1000 (Ethernet)
RX packets 1616 bytes 201700 (196.9 KiB)
RX errors 0 dropped 463 overruns 0 frame 0
TX packets 259 bytes 41559 (40.5 KiB)
TX errors 0 dropped 0 overruns 0 carrier 0 collisions 0
iwconfig output:
$ iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
eth0 no wireless extensions.
wlan0 IEEE 802.11 ESSID:"XXXXXX"
Mode:Managed Frequency:5.745 GHz Access Point: CC:F4:11:3B:8B:7A
Bit Rate=433.3 Mb/s Tx-Power=31 dBm
Retry short limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:on
Link Quality=64/70 Signal level=-46 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:0 Invalid misc:0 Missed beacon:0
The TP-Link shows up in the lsusb command:
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 2357:0138 TP-Link 802.11ac NIC
wpa_supplicant configuration for wlan1:
# cat /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-wlan1.conf
country=US
ctrl_interface=DIR=/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev
update_config=1
p2p_disabled=1
network={
ssid="RPi"
mode=2
key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
psk="SECRET"
frequency=2412
}
interface configuration for wlan1:
# cat /etc/systemd/network/12-wlan1.network
[Match]
Name=wlan1
[Network]
LLMNR=no
LinkLocalAddressing=no
MulticastDNS=yes
DHCP=ipv4
Regarding the interface configuration: I've tried a few different variations based upon the original source and other answers.
I feel like I'm missing something fundamental, like a driver for the TP-Link, because I have never seen wlan1 showing in interface listings
Finally: systemctl cat for wlan1.service:
$ systemctl cat wpa_supplicant@wlan1.service
# /etc/systemd/system/wpa_supplicant@wlan1.service
[Unit]
Description=WPA supplicant daemon (interface-specific version)
After=network.target
# NetworkManager users will probably want the dbus version instead.
[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/sbin/wpa_supplicant -c/etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant-%I.conf -Dnl80211,wext -i%I
[Install]
Alias=multi-user.target.wants/wpa_supplicant@%i.service
The issue is that I do not seem to be able to get wlan1 to come up. Many of the other instructions are based upon using the default dhcpcd and weren't usable, but it seems as though this should be quite possible but I'm missing something fundamental. I would greatly appreciate thoughts, feedback, and questions. Thanks for your time and help.
Response to comments:
Thank you so very much for your suggestions. Here is the result of the /sys/class/net listing and lshw:
$ ls /sys/class/net
eth0 lo wlan0
$ sudo lshw -class network
*-usb:0 DISABLED
description: Ethernet interface
vendor: Microchip Technology, Inc. (formerly SMSC)
physical id: 1
bus info: usb@1:1.1.1
logical name: eth0
version: 3.00
serial: b8:27:eb:bd:03:08
capacity: 1Gbit/s
capabilities: usb-2.10 ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=lan78xx driverversion=5.10.63-v7+ link=no maxpower=2mA multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=480Mbit/s
*-network
description: Wireless interface
physical id: 2
logical name: wlan0
serial: b8:27:eb:e8:56:5d
capabilities: ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=brcmfmac driverversion=7.45.229 firmware=01-2dbd9d2e ip=192.168.86.36 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
