Re: statically address wifi interface without an SSID

[Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>]

On Tue, 2016-04-05 at 08:42 -0500, Matt Zagrabelny wrote:
> On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 2:47 PM, Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com> wrote:
> > On Mon, 2016-04-04 at 14:07 -0500, Matt Zagrabelny wrote:
> > > Hey Dan,
> > >
> > > On Mon, Apr 4, 2016 at 1:54 PM, Dan Williams <dcbw redhat com>
> > > wrote:
> > > > On Mon, 2016-04-04 at 11:47 -0500, Matt Zagrabelny wrote:
> > > > > Greetings,
> > > > >
> > > > > I have an rpi2 with two USB wifi dongles. One dongle I use to
> > > > > connect
> > > > > to whatever wifi network I'm around. This works great. Thanks
> > > > > NM!
> > > > >
> > > > > The other wifi dongle I'm using with hostapd.
> > > > >
> > > > > I'd love for NM to be able to statically address this
> > > > > interface
> > > > > without needing to assign it an SSID - since the interface is
> > > > > running
> > > > > in master mode.
> > > > >
> > > > > Does anyone know if this is possible? Perhaps by manually
> > > > > tweaking
> > > > > files in /etc/NetworkManager?
> > > > NM can use wpa_supplicant's lightweight AP mode to do most of
> > > > what
> > > > hostapd does, if you don't need extensive features like
> > > > 802.1x/EAP.
> > > >  Perhaps that could work instead of hostapd?
> > > And it is configured via the "hotspot" option in NM?
> > >
> > > Does it handle DHCP or do I need to run that separately?
> > > Currently
> > > using udhcpd.
> > Yes.  First select "Hotspot" (AP) mode in nm-connection-editor and
> > assign the SSID.  Now you have a choice of IP addressing; you can
> > either assign whatever static address you want and use your own
> > DHCP,
> > DNS forwarding, and routing rules.
> When attempting to manually set the v4 address I am at:
>
> IPv4 Settings -> Method
>
> - Shared to other computers
> - Disable
>
> The other choices are unselectable. When I hover over "Manual" it
> does
> not highlight as it does for the two listed above.
>
> If I wanted manually assign, am I looking at the right option?

I forgot that while the option works, it's not enabled in the UI.  But
if you create it with Shared, then edit the conneciton file in
/etc/NetworkManager/system-connections and something like this:

[ipv4]
addresses=172.16.5.1/24
and then 'nmcli con reload', it should do the right thing when you
start the hotspot connection.  For a /24 I think it'll start handing
out DHCP leases at .10, leaving you some static IPs to play around
with.

Dan