Sorry, been away for a bit and still trying to catch up on the thread. But to answer your questions about what update repo I’m using, it’s: http://download.opensuse.org/ports/update/leap/15.0/oss/
Thanks, Jarrod! This is incredibly helpful.
I do not have this repo listed, and it looks like I should. I’ve got a different thread going about “zypper dup” wanting to downgrade 25 packages. While I’m still confused about exactly what happened there, this update repo seems to have updated versions of some of the packages I’m using. In particular, both firefox and thunderbird crash on startup with the versions I have installed, and this update has versions with one minor level after the ones I have installed. So it looks like I should be using this repo for updates.
I’ll pass this info along on that thread and see if I’m likely to get myself into more trouble by adding this, but it looks like it’s exactly what I need.
David
Jarrod, I finally have 15.0 working with, as best I can tell, full network functionality and major software components working correctly. Thanks for your help! You can see the other thread here:
https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/531703-quot-zypper-dup-quot-wants-to-downgrade-25-pkgs-on-a-new-Leap-15-install?p=2870151#post2870151
The pasted transcript from Malcolm Lewis was particularly helpful in getting the right update repo listed and then doing the patch/update so that I got everything in sync again. But your reference above was the key for me, since it pointed out (again, as you had before) that I just didn’t have the right URI’s for updates.
Thanks!
David
Good news indeed.
Glad we were all able to help each other. I think I’ll run through the process once more on the 3B+ to make sure I have a good clean install before moving it over to replace my older 3B.
Thanks!
I have tried to get Leap 15.0 running on my RPi 3B+ a couple of times now with no real success so far. I can get wlan0 up, but it is very erratic. Updating (“zypper dup” or using the GUI) does not help (it does a lot of installation stuff), but it is still bad and I have not been able to get eth0 running at all.
Do you really get it running? I tried with the 2018.07.02 build.
Yes, I got it running and it has been very stable. I think you’re running into the same problem I did initially. I didn’t have the right repository set – there was an error in the distribution and it didn’t have the correct repository for updates, as distributed. Once I added the correct repository, the update worked just fine: installed a working eth0 and wifi driver (along with a number of other updates). I’ve been running it since that original posting and it has been stable all this time. In fact, this posting is coming from Firefox running on Leap 15 aarch64 on a Pi-3B+. WiFi and Ethernet are both running at max speed and the drivers seem very stable and fast.
I didn’t follow up on this in my original thread because I thought the new releases fixed this. But in a different thread, I described the solution Malcolm Lewis guided me to, which worked: https://forums.opensuse.org/showthread.php/531703-quot-zypper-dup-quot-wants-to-downgrade-25-pkgs-on-a-new-Leap-15-install?p=2870151#post2870151
I think there are two keys that might help you. The first is to add the correct repository for updates (which I thought the new releases would have done):
zypper ar -f -g -n "openSUSE-Ports-Leap-15.0-repo-update-oss" http://download.opensuse.org/ports/update/leap/15.0/oss/ openSUSE-Ports-Leap-15.0-repo-update-oss
The second is a piece of advice Malcolm has finally hammered into my head: don’t use “zypper dup”. He recommends, and I have adopted, the following to update my LEAP system – actually, patch it – once it’s running and stable:
zypper -vvv -t patch --no-recommends
So I suggest you first read through that other thread. Then reinstall from the raw image file to your medium (xzcat …| dd …); let your Pi boot up, reconfigure disk, etc., and log in as root; add the update repo with the first code above; then do the patching. That should get you a stable and reliable system. If not, post back here and I’ll work through a complete reinstall myself to see if I can find the problem.
Good luck! This was pretty frustrating, but it turned out that the solution was really quite easy and the result was quite a nice system. It’ll be worth persisting just a bit longer.
David
The “zypper ar” command does not work for me. That link is no longer valid it seems (try visiting it in a web browser). Trying it results in an error message. The parent directory exists, and that is what I already have as repository URL.
The pastebin no longer shows.
Doing the “zypper patch” (without the “zypper ar”) gives sensible output, but after a reboot it comes up with no reliable networking, same as before and perhaps even worse.
Have you encountered the problem with that the mouse pointer gets stuck at the bottom line of the display? I have had it a couple of times now.
I can agree that it is pretty frustrating. It looks so promising otherwise, so close and yet so far away.
Well, heck. I thought it would be easy. That seems never to be true! 
On my out for a bike ride with my wife, back in 45 min or so. Will try a fresh install from scratch and report back later today.
No, I didn’t see a problem with the mouse pointer getting stuck. I’m using a Logitech K400 wireless kbd/trackpad combo. Probably wouldn’t make a difference, but might … could again be a driver issue.
Give me a few hours to let me see what I can find.
David
Well, that was so much fun that I just had to do the new install twice.
So, I have good news, bad news, and good news:
[ul]
[li]You’re not crazy: the 07.02 distribution continues to be flawed in the way I saw nearly two months ago[/li][li]I don’t have a “change this and it’ll all work” solution.[/li][li]I do have a process I’ve tried a couple of times that will get you an installed, updated, and stable Leap 15 on RPi-3 within about 90 minutes – less if my additional suggestion works.[/li][/ul]
The problem seems to be in both the drivers and the network configuration system. On a fresh install, eth0 simply doesn’t work. And the wifi driver is slow and tends to drop a lot of packets – I was running a 50% drop rate at some points. And the DHCP system forgets its DNS settings and won’t find hosts. And wifi doesn’t start up on reboots. I’m sure there’s more, but the point is that it seems to be not just one problem, and no one solution seems to solve all the problems.
I’ll document this by starting a new thread – no one will find this here but you. But here’s what I did, twice, and it worked; some shortcut hints included:
[ul]
[li]Download the image file to your host system. I used a web browser to get to [/li]```html
http://download.opensuse.org/ports/aarch64/distribution/leap/15.0/appliances/
and downloaded openSUSE-Leap15.0-ARM-XFCE-raspberrypi3.aarch64-2018.07.02-Buildlp150.1.1.raw.xz
[li]xzcat ... | dd ... the .xz image file to a microSD[/li][li]Insert the microSD into your RPi-3B(or 3B+) microSD slot; if you've prepared your RPi-3B/3B+ for USB booting, you can insert your medium into the USB port and boot from that[/li][li]Power up the Pi: let it boot up, resize the disk, reboot, and bring you to the login screen; login as root/linux.[/li][li]I had an Ethernet cable plugged into my RPi, and WiFi is in the room. The Pi didn't see eth0 at all but it did tell me that WiFi was available.[/li][li]You may find it helpful to have two terminal windows open at this point: one wide one for doing tasks and one for checking system issues.[/li][li]In the toolbar at the left bottom of the screen, click on Settings/Yast/System. Then first open "Date and Time" and set your time zone. The time will still be wrong because the network isn't up and it can't get to a time server, but it'll get set correctly later. Next open "Network Settings":[/li][LIST]
[li]Set hostname for yourself[/li][li]I set "No IPv6" in the "General" tab[/li][li]Configure eth0 (I set DHCP and IPv4 only)[/li][li]Configure wlan0[/li][LIST]
[li]I set DHCP and IPv4 only[/li][li]Scan the network[/li][li]Select your SSID from the resulting dropdown menu[/li][li]Select your router's authentication mode[/li][li]Enter your encryption key[/li][/ul]
[li]Next ... next ...OK to exit "Network Settings" and let it start the services[/li][li]eth0 still won't work[/li][li]wlan0 will come up; if you have a 5GHz channel, it'll use it (on a 3B+) but the rate is reported as 24Mb/sec.[/li][/LIST]
[li]From your monitoring screen, "ifconfig": you'll see eth0 listed but no IP address; if it worked correctly, you'll see wlan0 with an IP address (if not, go back and re-check your "Network Settings"[/li][li]Try "ping google.com" to make sure DNS is working and that you can get out. Do this now, because in a few minutes it won't be working again and you'll want to make sure it was working in the first place (it was).[/li][li]"iwconfig" will show your connection to your AP; if it's like mine, it'll be 5.8GHz or so but only 24Mb/sec[/li][li]Do a reboot now.[/li][li]When it comes back up, "ifconfig" showed wifi up, eth0 down. "ping google.com" worked.[/li][li]Now, I did the [/li]```
zypper ar -f -g -n "openSUSE-Ports-Leap-15.0-repo-update-oss" http://download.opensuse.org/ports/update/leap/15.0/oss/ openSUSE-Ports-Leap-15.0-repo-update-oss
and it worked just fine. BUT, it simply replicated as the third repository, with a different name, the URL listed with the first repository. So I think you can do it and IT SHOULD WORK, but it is probably not necessary (I wouldn’t do it if I were to do a third install ).
[li]I DID NOT DO THIS HERE BUT WOULD TRY IT NEXT TIME: reboot at this point, and when the system comes back up, the wlan0 connection will not be working. Activate it with the widget on the right-hand side of the toolbar (not the “Settings/Yast/System/Network Settings” method). I believe there’s some conflict between things that want to manage wifi, and I think this approach would bring up the network so that the following update steps would proceed without problems. But if it doesn’t fix it here, you’ll need to do it a little later when the problems become obvious.[/li][li]Now do the [/li]```
zypper -vvv -t patch --no-recommends
in your large task window. It gets started and then seems to go nowhere (if the problem I had still exists); if the reboot/network restart I suggested just above worked, this will proceed smoothly. If you do "ifconfig"'s in your monitoring window, mine got hung both times at about 11.8MB received on wlan0. I tried CNTL-C followed by "r" for retry, but nothing really sped it up. Then I noticed the dropped-packet count was growing just as fast as the received-packet count.
[li]Then things got really bad: the DNS system failed. A "ping google.com" reported that there was a "temporary failure in name resolution". Again, I think these problems were caused by competing network managers ... just my guess.[/li][li](If your zypper process worked, you won't have to do this) At this point, I opened up the toolbar and "settings/yast/system/network settings" again, went to the hostname/DNS tab, and added #1 DNS as 192.168.1.1 (use whatever your router IP address is on your net) and #2 as 8.8.8.8 (google). Then "ifdown wlan0" and "ifup wlan0"; CNTL-C the zypper process and then "r" to retry. Started OK, but then slowed down again.[/li][li]So here's where I'd try it differently next time and try the reboot and network connection I suggested above. But in my case (both cases), I rebooted, started the WiFi network from the toolbar panel widget on the right-hand side of the toolbar, and then started the zypper patch command again. It worked just fine this time: network performance was great, and it downloaded and installed 97 packages in just a couple of minutes.[/li][li]Reboot[/li][li]Both eth0 and wlan0 were activated when the system rebooted -- didn't have to click anything to restart them. But wlan0 was still 24Mb/sec.[/li][li]I did a "iwconfig wlan0 power off"; "ifdown wlan0"; "ifup wlan0".[/li][li]Then "iwconfig" reported wlan0 at 433Mb/sec (!).[/li][li]"zypper -vvv -t patch --no-recommends" said nothing to do[/li][li]"zypper up" said 5 video lib packages to update; I said "yes"; updates done; reboot; all's well.[/li][/LIST]
Sorry if this seems long: it really is pretty quick, but I wanted to make it explicit so you knew what to expect. Please give it a try and let me know how it goes. Oh, and time yourself if you can -- I'm curious how long it would take someone else. If it works for you, I'll post as a new thread to make it easier to find.
Good luck!
DavidNow I have struggled 1 hour with my X11 openSUSE image and it does not work.
I skipped the “zypper ar” step.
After initial network configuration and a reboot, I realized that I have no widget to enable wlan0. Looking in vain in the menus for something and it just start by itself (after a while).
“zypper patch” went fine. I tried various other things mentioned and it looks similar, though my wlan0 is not as fast as yours, I consistently get slower rates, but it upgrades to 24MB/s (I think it was in the end).
At this point, no network comes up after a reboot, no eth0 or wlan0. After a long wait (minutes), wlan0 comes up by itself and does not want to connect. Doing “route add default gw 192.168.1.254” to set a default gateway manually, it can ping google.com. As before, ability to connect comes and goes. No eth0 at all.
Now it is late here, I will try again tomorrow using the identical image that you used.
Thanks for the update. Now that I know you’re using the X11 image, I’ll try it later today (USA, Mountain time), after my chores, to see if my approach works. Sounds like you’ve still got a network configuration problem that has continued from the initial distribution, even after the zypper patches were applied. I’ll see if I can work through it with you.
Hi
Just a thought, perhaps look at starting with the JeOS image and work up to the desktop of choice via installing the pattern? Also consider getting a USB serial cable, this can save some frustrations/rebuilds with direct access…
I was curious so did the X11 install before chores (got to leave now!). The procedure I outlined worked: downloaded the X11 07.02 distribution, installed it, and updated (patched) it in about an hour.
Yes, don’t bother with the “zypper ar …” command: not needed.
One change: add the DNS entries manually when you’re setting the host name: that saves a step.
Again, only wlan0 came up, at 24Mb/sec: eth0 simply wouldn’t work.
In my “zypper patch …” command, it kept stalling when downloading the kernel.rpm file: got 75% through the first time; I CNTL-C’d and told it to retry (“r”) multiple times, and it would only get to about 17% of that download before it would stall. So I rebooted and re-executed the “zypper patch …” command and it ran to completion, with network running at about 1.1Mb/sec. So if it seems to stall when you’re downloading, force a reboot and start it again. That seems to fix it.
After the update completed, I rebooted; eth0 was working; did the “iwconfig wlan0 power off; ifdown wlan0; ifup wlan0” step and got wlan0 to 433Mb/sec.
As before, doing a “zypper patch…” at that point said ‘nothing to do’; a “zypper up” resulted in the update of 5 video lib packages.
But at this point, I think the process is repeatable and successful. The only nuisance is that “zypper patch” process, where the distribution wlan0 driver is flawed and eth0 doesn’t work at all. If you’re patient and persistent through that, rebooting when it seems to stall and then restarting the command, it’s actually a pretty quick process.
I’ll document this more carefully later today, but give it a try again with X11 distro. It does work.
Well, Malcolm, I was so convinced this wouldn’t work that I went off and did it. And of course, it worked! Foolish for me to have doubted!
The reason it wouldn’t work, I thought, was that of course the JeOS distro would be using the same basic drivers and network management tools as the X11 and XFCE distros. So of course JeOS would have the same problems (non-functioning eth0, unreliable wlan0) as X11/XFCE. Wrong! Apparently the JeOS drivers are different. Your suggestion works and yields a stable OS with little manual intervention needed. It’s not exactly the same result as installing the XFCE.xz file, but it seems close enough to work with it. By now you’d think I’d know better than to doubt you! :shame:
For hth313, here’s the sequence. It requires an Ethernet connection to your RPi-3B+ to do the install and updates, but after the updates, you can activate the WiFi and it works just fine.
- I went to http://download.opensuse.org/ports/aarch64/distribution/leap/15.0/appliances/ and downloaded openSUSE-Leap15.0-ARM-JeOS-raspberrypi3.aarch64-2018.07.02-Buildlp150.1.1.raw.xz
- I did the “xzcat … | dd …” copy of that image to a µSD card
- Inserted the µSD card into the MMC slot of a RPi-3B+ that was connected by Ethernet cable to my router
- powered up the RPi-3B+ and booted from that JeOS image drive
- JeOS started up, resized partitions, completed the install, and gave me a CLI login prompt
- Logged in as root/linux
- “ifconfig” showed eth0 working but no sign of wlan0
- Did the “zypper -vvv -t patch --no-recommends” and zypper installed 46 upgrades speedily and with no stalling
- Manually did “zypper in lsof” as the install asked me to do as it completed
- Rebooted. Still no wlan0!
But eth0 working fine. - Checked available patterns with “zypper search -t pattern”; saw both xfce and x11; you’ll want to use x11, but I wanted xfce. - “zypper in -t pattern xfce” installed 1351 new packages: the whole process ran unattended without interruption or stalling
- “zypper -vvv -t patch --no-recommends” and “zypper up” both report nothing to do
- reboot. After some initial activity on the display, there’s a long delay during which the screen is completely black and you might think the system has crashed. It hasn’t. This behavior is different than installing the XFCE (or X11) image directly. Don’t panic: just wait and it’ll finish booting.
- When the system comes up, it presents a GUI login prompt! Login as root/linux.
- Click on the sequence toolbar/Settings/YaST
- Click on “Date and Time” and set your zone
- Click on “Network Settings”; set hostname (don’t need to set DNS); disable IPv6 if you’re so inclined; set up your wlan0 parameters; Next … OK to exit and let it restart networking
- In a terminal window, “ifconfig” will show both eth0 and wlan0 with IP addresses.
- “iwconfig” shows wlan0 at 24Mb/sec
- “iwconfig wlan0 power off; ifdown wlan0; ifup wlan0” and then “iwconfig” show 433Mb/sec
- Reboot
- Both network interfaces up. wlan0 at 24Mb/sec again. Set the “power” setting again if you want high speed on your local net, but otherwise it works just fine. (If not, double-check your toolbar/Settings/YaST/Network Settings parameters for wlan0.)
While the install and updating from the XFCE/X11 .xz images took an hour, this process took 2 hours (the pattern install took quite a long time for 1351 packages). But the good news is that it runs with no stalling, no errors, and no manual intervention required
Again, good luck! And post back here if you run into problems again.
For me it consistently does not work. I tried it again with exactly the same result.
I configure wlan0, get a connection that is somewhat stable, but not entirely reliable. “zypper patch” now gets 92 packages, which is some more than before (I think it was 84 yesterday).
Reboot and no network. It works worse than before reboot, but I can get wlan0 to work for a while by doing “route add default gw ‘ip-address-of-my-gateway’”. At this point “zypper patch” reports nothing to do, but there are 5 updates NOT to be installed, which are some “av” packages.
No eth0 and wlan0 comes and goes.
I can upgrade wlan0 speed from 24 to 56.5Mb/s by doing the commands mentioned. I have not measured how it does in reality, but I get up to 1.5Mb/s during “zypper patch”.
I’ll go back and look through this again to see if I can see anything I left out. I’ve tried it about 5 times now on the 3B+ and can coerce it to success, but the process is hit-or-miss – I hit different problems and work around them with reboots, etc. I just haven’t been able to develop a predictable step-by-step process for the direct install of the XFCE or X11 image. Not exactly the experience you’d like for a new install!
For now, I suggest you try Malcolm’s suggestion of installing JeOS and then installing the X11 pattern. I gave the steps in a posting above. I just did it again to make sure it was consistently smooth, and it is. It’ll take you a little longer, but the update process is just waiting, not frustrating stalls.
The one change I’d suggest is that after your first boot, at the command line, type “yast”, pick “system”, do the date-time setting, and do “network settings” to set up your wlan0. Even if you don’t have an Ethernet connection, wlan0 will work just fine and you can get your patching done, then install the x11 pattern.
By the way, the iwconfig reports bits/sec; zypper reports bytes/sec. So you’re getting about 12Mb/sec throughput on your network.
Are you sure you have a 3B+ and not a 3B? The 3B will give me 56 or 72 Mb/sec, but the 3B+ gives 433Mb/sec (not really … just says it will). On the other hand, the install of the XFCE image directly on the 3B works perfectly while the install of the same image on 3B+ fails because of the network driver issues. So I’m guessing you really do have the 3B+, but I’m confused as to why it would report only 56Mb/sec. AH … maybe your router only does 56Mb/sec! If that’s the case, then I understand why the Pi will only report 56Mb/sec.
Anyway, try the JeOS route. It’ll be a LOT less painful and a lot more rewarding! Meanwhile, I’ll try my X11 image install again to see if I can find a prescription for a successful install/update procedure.
OK, I’ve gotten to the same place as you now.
- I did a complete fresh install of the X11 image.
- Ran YaST/Network Settings to set up wlan0 since eth0 isn’t working.
- Got the usual flaky WiFi connection.
- Did the “zypper patch …”. Stalled downloading some of the repo catalogs, and when it stalled, I did a CNTL-C and then “r” to retry. Nursed it through the catalog downloads.
- BUT, again stalled big-time while downloading the kernel.rpm (large file!). So I rebooted and re-issued the zypper patch command and it ran to completion with no further interruptions!
I thought I’d seen that behavior before so watched carefully this time. So this is a way to get the updates installed with minimal grief. - Rebooted and eth0 was up but wlan0 was down
. Odd, as I don’t think I saw that behavior before. But I did a “ifup wlan0” and checked with “ifconfig”, and wlan0 had an IP. Pinging google.com worked. Checked “zypper patch”: nothing to do. Checked “zypper up”: usual 5 video packages. - THEN I unplugged eth0. (I think in the past I hadn’t done that.) And now networking failed completely. Fiddled with wlan0 settings through YaST a couple of times: no resolution. Compared /etc/sysconfig/network/ config & script files with a working LEAP 15 I had installed previously and made minor adjustments to the new install: no resolution. Back into YaST and set the default gateway (192.168.1.1 in my case) and DNS servers (192.168.1.1 and 8.8.8.8) and restarted networking (“systemctl restart network”): wlan0 working but in the same flaky way it was on first install. Do a ping of google.com and get 8 packets transmitted, 30 dropped, 10 transmitted, 20 dropped, etc.
Conclusion: the distribution has problems in networking (drivers or management) for Pi-3B+ that the updates don’t fix. Now, the odd thing is that I have a Leap 15 on my USB-attached SSD that I’ve been running for 6-8 weeks that works perfectly well with a wlan0 interface: I don’t have it cabled to Ethernet. I will have to think about that a bit, but for now I have no explanation of why my earlier XFCE install (05.20 or 06.04 maybe?) and update seems to work just fine but an install of 07.02 fails and even after getting the updates installed, it continues to fail.
So I apologize for wasting your time on trying to patch the 07.02 X11 install to get it all working. At this point, I have to agree that it just isn’t usable.
And if you haven’t tried Malcolm’s suggestion of JeOS → X11 pattern install, I suggest giving it a try. It seemed to go perfectly for me. Takes a little longer, but works without the frustrations. If you do try it, please post.
Meanwhile I’ll start a new thread about the problems with the 07.02 distros.
David
I have a 3B+ (it says so in different words on it), and I think my lack of wlan0 speed is as you mention probably related to the router I have.
Now I tried again starting with the JeOS image and it came up with eth0!
Installation of 843 packages for x11 went mostly smooth, it had one stop where I asked it to continue. I then did the suggested commands and everything looked as mentioned and it went on fine.
After the final reboot it come up and ifconfig reported it had IP addresses for both wlan0 and eth0.
Now the problems started. I tried to ping it and wlan0 responded, but eth0 did not respond at all, despite having an IP address and it was talking to a machine on the same network. I decided to disable wlan0 and I also configured eth0 manually in the UI, giving it a fixed IP, netmask, DNS and default gateway. Rebooting now goes mostly black with a blinking cursor, no spamming about processes being started. Late in this process, but before X comes up, the laptop starts to get answers to the pings.
Looking at the response time at the laptop side, it is typically in the 10-40ms range for a while, then it drops to 1000+ ms range for a while, then it goes back to 10-40 and this repeats after some 8 pings or so.
At the RPi side I ping google.com which runs for a while, but then it starts to come back as 5000-7000ms range and shortly after it stops. At this point I cannot even ping the router using an IP number.
So, some progress, but I do not think eth0 is healthy.
Do you get some weird display issues too? In the left hand side of the screen it is infested by small colourful dots (ants), it goes vertically far to the left side (but not the leftmost pixel columns). It is more pronounced with some colours on the screen, it is very visible when opening the (start?) menu at the bottom left.
Thanks for confirming; after I thought about it a bit, I realized that was probably the situation
Now I tried again starting with the JeOS image and it came up with eth0!
Installation of 843 packages for x11 went mostly smooth, it had one stop where I asked it to continue. I then did the suggested commands and everything looked as mentioned and it went on fine.
After the final reboot it come up and ifconfig reported it had IP addresses for both wlan0 and eth0.
Now the problems started. I tried to ping it and wlan0 responded, but eth0 did not respond at all, despite having an IP address and it was talking to a machine on the same network. I decided to disable wlan0 and I also configured eth0 manually in the UI, giving it a fixed IP, netmask, DNS and default gateway. Rebooting now goes mostly black with a blinking cursor, no spamming about processes being started. Late in this process, but before X comes up, the laptop starts to get answers to the pings.
Looking at the response time at the laptop side, it is typically in the 10-40ms range for a while, then it drops to 1000+ ms range for a while, then it goes back to 10-40 and this repeats after some 8 pings or so.
At the RPi side I ping google.com which runs for a while, but then it starts to come back as 5000-7000ms range and shortly after it stops. At this point I cannot even ping the router using an IP number.
So, some progress, but I do not think eth0 is healthy.
OK, is that with eth0 cabled and working or with wlan0 working, or both? I’m surprised that eth0 didn’t respond initially, and I’m wondering if it was responding after you rebooted.
In looking at my posting from 15 June @ 20:03, in this thread, I see that I made the remark “Eventually, I tried disabling wicked and enabling NetworkManager, with no success; so I reversed and disabled NetworkManager and enabled wicked, and suddenly the downloads flowed consistently at about 2MB/sec (my ISP service fluctuates 30-40Mb/sec, so 16Mb/sec isn’t bad).” I’ve never been sure whether these problems with wlan0 service were caused by the device driver or by competing network managers fighting over the device. (I confess I that I still don’t understand wicked vs NetworkManager, after several attempts).
I was seeing the same erratic wlan0 performance behavior on my last install of XFCE. Do a ping and let it run: 10 packets OK, 20 dropped, 8 OK, 10 dropped, etc. And that’s the behavior that was interfering with our initial attempts to zypper patches. Didn’t get fixed after the updates. I’m still wondering if the problem comes from wicked/NetManager squabbling. Unfortunately I don’t have a solution for it other than to try “systemctl stop NetworkManager” and “systemctl disable NetworkManager”, then “ifdown wlan0; ifup wlan0”, and see if it makes a difference.
My Leap 15 production install (from June) is working fine with wlan0 as the network service (and eth0 not cabled). Pings result in long sequences of replies with no dropped packets and timings all about the same. “iwconfig wlan0 power off” results in 433Mb/sec as the nominal rate, and pings to my local gateway (192.168.1.1) drop from 6-7 msec to 1.3 msec, so it really does seem to make a difference. But most importantly, I have disabled NetworkManager as I suggested in the previous paragraph: “systemctl status” shows no sign of NetworkManager. So you might give that a try. It’s easy to restore if things get worse; if things get better, it’s a pretty easy fix.
Please let me know how that turns out if you try it.
Do you get some weird display issues too? In the left hand side of the screen it is infested by small colourful dots (ants), it goes vertically far to the left side (but not the leftmost pixel columns). It is more pronounced with some colours on the screen, it is very visible when opening the (start?) menu at the bottom left.
Interesting that you’d ask. Yes, I did on the X11 install, but not on my XFCE install. I thought it was an entertaining side feature of that installation! But I didn’t work with it long enough to get annoyed by it, which I think I quickly would have. No idea how you would get rid of it, but you’re not imagining things! (This is coming to you from Firefox/XFCE/Leap 15/RPi-3B+ … it’s quite stable and performs quite well.)
Not sure right now how to help you with the eth0 issue, either. But I’d suggest stopping NetworkManager to see if that improves your wlan0 performance and stability: please let me know if you try it.
David
I meant to add that I took the risk and did the patch update to my working XFCE system today, fearful that it would degrade to the state we’ve seen in new installs. It didn’t. I did the zypper patch and went from 4.12.14-lp150.12.4 to 4.12.14-lp150.12.7. Rebooted. No problems with network and performance remained the same.
I say this because I think it indicates that the problem you found is probably not a regressive problem in the updated kernel. So going back to an earlier distro would probably not help at this point.