Admin Console should offer iiab-hotspot-on|off functionality [and explain command-line alternatives, which are often necessary!]

[holta]

Recommendation from @mitra42:

Once I got on [ http://box.lan/admin ] ...
Internal WiFi AP - says its enabled, but is not showing up. There is a line 'hostapd is enabled.' but that is cryptic, luckily I remembered a message back at the top of install.txt about running 'iiab-hotspot-on'. Suggestion: a) check if 'hostapd is enabled' and report here. b) either if possible allow running 'iiab-hotspot-on' from the admin page, and if not give instructions on that admin page on how to do so.

Refs:

• Opening up ports [needs better documentation!] + DNS/dnsmasq failure when installing IIAB over WiFi #1519
• IIAB installer should make hotspot & networking choices far more understandable #1536

[holta]

A Univ of Arkansas TA faced exactly the same issues earlier this week, after she installed IIAB using Wi-Fi — without realizing that her Ethernet was not working..

She eventually solved the problems by running iiab-hotspot-on — but indeed this needs to be much more intuitive, e.g. the Admin Console should offer a quite vocal reminder to run that — or built-in functionality to do the same.

[holta]

@jvonau suggests we might put a LOUD BANNER in the implementer's face every time they [login or] ssh in, similar to Raspbian & IIAB's security warnings about weak passwords, but also educating the implementer about the need to possibly run sudo iiab and iiab-hotspot-on:

If so emulating these 2 files:
https://github.com/iiab/iiab/blob/master/roles/iiab-admin/templates/lxde_ssh_warn.sh
https://github.com/iiab/iiab/blob/master/roles/iiab-admin/templates/profile_ssh_warn.sh

As installed by:
https://github.com/iiab/iiab/blob/master/roles/iiab-admin/tasks/main.yml#L24-L44

Ref: #1521

[tim-moody]

how did they ssh in, over the wan? is the wan wlan0? will they lose the connection by running iiab-hostspot-on?

[mitra42]

The places it really needs IMHO are
a) at the end of the "sudo iiab" process, since the only place I saw it tell me to do this was in the install.sh
b) In the Admin page where you are changing WiFi settings and where the relationship between "hostapd is enabled." and "iiab-hotspot-on" is really something only IIAB experts are going to know. (Not someone trying to install a IIAB to take to the field).

[holta]

how did they ssh in, over the wan? is the wan wlan0? will they lose the connection by running iiab-hostspot-on?

In the case of Univ of Arkansas, I (think) she has a screen attached to her Raspbian Desktop, and does not use ssh at all. Indeed she says that typing in iiab-hotspot-on solved all her IIAB problems in the end.

[holta]

Ref / Work-In-Progress: #1527 "RPi installs w/ Ethernet AND WiFi very flaky: (1) disconnects all ssh sessions (2) forces auto-creation of unwanted hotspot"

[holta]

@darkenvy & @floydianslips ask how SSID might be rapidly changed from Admin Console.

Related:
#796 Rapid networking & other IIAB config changes that can't wait ~20min for Ansible

[mitra42]

@holta did this make it in, (in terms of modifying my installation docs which currently say at the start

* If at all possible insert Ethernet, otherwise it will work over WiFi with some extra steps.

And at the bottom ...

And if you want to run as a local WiFi hotspot (recommended) then from the ssh prompt..

iiab-hotspot-on

[holta]

@mitra42:

@tim-moody has done a ton of work here, allowing an increasing amount of iiab-hotspot-on and iiab-hotspot-off functionality from IIAB's Admin Console (http://box.lan/admin) as he can explain more.

But also keep in mind that many intimately related use-cases are fraught here (during IIAB installation especially) and particularly if the implementer tries to install everything from their building's WiFi, and doesn't realize they Can't Have It Both Ways.

(As such this is a work in progress, but please reiterate to those willing to listen, that IIAB installation will always be far easier to explain if a live-to-Internet Ethernet cable is handy.)

[jvonau]

#2739

[jvonau]

coming up on 3 years are we there yet?

[holta]

coming up on 3 years are we there yet?

Thanks for surfacing this complicated UX question.

(I don't know if it's solvable, but it definitely merits investigation!)

In the same vein, a couple tangentially related UX/onboarding questions below — that likewise represent nearly universal hassles to almost all newcomers — desperately trying to avoid settings complexity! 😱

• PR Detect, record if wifi can be AP and suppress installing supporting files #3070
• Should host_country_code in local_vars.yml update wpa_supplicant.conf not just hostapd.conf ? #3097 and associated PR set 'host_country_code' to value found in wpa_supplicant.conf [on Raspberry Pi OS only, deferring Ubuntu/Debian upstream issues] #3179