RE: AP support

[Michal Strnad <renmccourtey icloud com>]

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.

-----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