wifi-menu/netctl disregards DNS from local router

[N0NB]

I am setting up a Pi 4B with the alarm aarch64 and am setting up WiFi. I followed the main Arch Wiki for wifi-menu and netctl which did result in a successful network connection to my access point and to the Internet. I was able to update the system with pacman.

The first issue was seeing that the system clock was not updated even though systemd-timesyncd is enabled and active.

The second issue is that hostname resolution on my LAN is not available. The /etc/resolv.conf file is much different from a Pi 3B+ that I have alarm armv7 running on with a wired connection. The Pi 3B+ has resolved LAN hostnames and maintained correct system time from my router since its installation.

I attempted a work around by stopping and disabling netctl and setting up wpa_supplicant per the main Arch Wiki. I also created a wlan.network file under /etc/systemd/network but that completely fails to establish a network connection upon a system start. Obviously I missed something in that setup.

Although I am relatively new to Arch, I am a long time Linux user mostly with Debian and Slackware experience.

[N0NB]

As a test with netctl disabled, I moved eth.network back into /etc/systemd/network from a temporary directory and moved the wlan.network file I had created into the temporary directory. I then did the same with the /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf file. Then I rebooted.

With wired Ethernet the network was brought up without issue, the contents of /etc/resolv.conf contain my local router's addresses for IPv4 and IPv6 and match the Pi 3B+. I can ping hosts on the LAN using their local domain names so LAN name resolution is working and time synchronization is working.

The only additional packages I have installed are mc, vim, bash-completion, man-db, and man-pages, none of which should have had any bearing on network setup.

[N0NB]

As it turned out, I apparently didn't read far enough down the Wiki page and had not enabled the wpa_supplicant@wlan0.service.

I did that and systemd-networkd works as expected with wlan0. I have LAN name resolution and timesyncd is working as expected.

What was failing with wifi-menu and netctl is unknown to me at this point. I can help troubleshoot it if anyone is interested.

[robg]

Late to chime in on this (and happy to hear that you have resolved your issue), but for future reference: this may have been due to conflicting network services. On the Arch wiki, the various network services are listed along a notice stating that only one should be used at a time. If I remember correctly, ALARM comes with systemd-networkd enabled, which may have been conflicting with netctl.

[graysky]

Yes, systemd-networkd has been the default for some time. I would not recommend netctl but you're free to use whatever you want. Just don't try more than one at the same time.

[N0NB]

First off, thanks for the replies.

I'm not using netctl now and my original impression from reading the main Arch Wiki is that netctl is a systemd-networkd helper so the thought of the two conflicting never occurred to me. In other words, my impression was that wifi-menu and netctl are supposed to be easy to use front ends for configuring wpa_supplicant and systemd-networkd. Hence my confusion, I guess.

Regardless, I set out to learn a few things and I guess I did!