Re: AP support

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

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