Re: AP support

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Tue, 2015-03-31 at 00:46 +0200, Michal Strnad wrote:
> I guess I'll just disable NM and go oldschool. It's very useful tool on client side but not particularly 
> necessary on the AP side, which is mostly one time setup. But thank you for your help.

If you need some of the extended features that hostapd provides, then
that's the best course of action for now; if you want NM to manage the
other interfaces you can of course tell NM to ignore the AP interface,
and it'll leave it up to hostap.

Dan

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Dan Williams [mailto:dcbw redhat com] 
> Sent: Monday, March 30, 2015 5:32 PM
> To: Michal Strnad
> Cc: networkmanager-list gnome org
> Subject: Re: AP support
>
> On Mon, 2015-03-30 at 02:37 +0200, Michal Strnad wrote:
> > Hello Dan and thanks for the info. There's actually dhcpd running on the very same box but nonetheless, 
> > it wouldn't make much sense having auto config on AP side so I did static settings. Now I do have 
> > broadcast up but no clients are able to connect for some reason, so back to manpages. Anyway, I'm quite 
> > surprised with wpa_supplicant's lightweight AP function, always thought wpa_s. is just a client part 
> > while hostapd serves as AP process. Does NM allow hostapd usage, or shall I stay with wpa_s. even for 
> > full-fledged AP?
>
> NM only works with wpa_supplicant's lightweight AP mode, not hostapd since hostapd requires quite a bit 
> more configuration/complexity.
>
> Can you try to connect a Linux client and then check 'dmesg' to see what the reject reason is?  Next thing 
> to do would be to get wpa_supplicant debug logs from the AP side to see how far the client gets according 
> to the wpa_supplicant AP mode process.
>
> Dan
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: Dan Williams [mailto:dcbw redhat com]
> > Sent: Thursday, March 26, 2015 5:33 PM
> > To: Michal Strnad
> > Cc: networkmanager-list gnome org
> > Subject: Re: AP support
> >
> > On Tue, 2015-03-24 at 02:38 +0100, Michal Strnad wrote:
> > > Hi everybody, just curious regarding AP support in nm. What’s the status, is it working? As it 
> > > apparently doesn’t use hostapd, how should it work? Documentation on this seems a bit scarce and I 
> > > can’t make it running, lacking details. 
> >
> > NM uses wpa_supplicant's "lightweight AP" support.  If your hardware supports it, and wpa_supplicant can 
> > drive it, then it should work.
> >
> > > [root core ~]# cat /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/AP5
> > >
> > > [connection]
> > > id=AP5
> > > uuid=e804ced1-0ed3-44c2-9f27-8e0c0784192b
> > > interface-name=wlp2s0
> > > type=wifi
> > >  
> > > [wifi]
> > > ssid=HsH5
> > > mode=ap
> > >  
> > > [ipv6]
> > > method=auto
> > >  
> > > [ipv4]
> > > method=auto
> >
> > I think the IP configuration is the problem.  "auto" actually means "get the IP configuration from DHCP 
> > or IPv6 SLAAC".  So your access point is timing out because it's trying to get an IP address from 
> > somewhere else, but there is nothing on the network that can provide it.
> >
> > If you switch the method to manual/static and set an IP address like 192.168.1.1, or set the IPv4 method 
> > to "shared", then it should work.
> > "shared" mode will assign the AP an IP address in the 10.42.43.x range (unless you override that) and 
> > start NAT, DNS forwarding, and a DHCP server.  In that respect "shared" is like a home WiFi router, and 
> > will automatically provide connectivity to some other connection that the machine has, like ethernet or 
> > WWAN.
> >
> > If that doesn't work for some reason, let us know!
> >
> > Dan