RE: AP support

[Michal Strnad <renmccourtey icloud com>]

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?

-----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