Fedora 15 as WLAN-AP

[Reindl Harald]

hi

does anybody know what hardware and configuraion-steps are needed to get
a fedora-pc working as WLAN access-point with WPA/WPA2

google shows me a lot of half-baken instructions which seems to be
mostly outdated for 2.6.41 / 3.0.x or missing wpa/ssid completly
since i think a bridge-script is not enough to specify SSID/WPA-key

and what cards are currently out-of-the-box supported and if they
call support ap-mode is also not clear for me this time

this two cards are available at my local hardware-dealer but how
to find out if supported before buy and as said how to configure
on fedora?

http://www.ditech.at/artikel/WDNK7/Wireless_PCI_Adapter_Rangebooster_D-LI...
http://www.ditech.at/artikel/WSNK12/Wireless_PCI_Adapter_LINKSYS_WMP600N_...

[Reindl Harald]

Am 26.11.2011 17:44, schrieb Tom Horsley:
>  On Sat, 26 Nov 2011 17:25:16 +0100
>  Reindl Harald wrote:
>  
> > hi
> >
> > does anybody know what hardware and configuraion-steps are needed to get
> > a fedora-pc working as WLAN access-point with WPA/WPA2
>  
>  Good luck - you'll need it :-) 
not really, with the right hardware it is easier than ever thought
my main problem was o find the right hardware and price does not matter
here because you will always buy headache while save money

http://www.dlink.com/products/?pid=549
___________________________________________________

[root@srv-rhsoft:~]$ cat /etc/systemd/system/hostapd.service
[Unit]
Description=Wireless-AP
After=network.target network-wlan-bridge.service
[Service]
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/hostapd -B /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
Restart=always
RestartSec=1
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
___________________________________________________

[root@srv-rhsoft:~]$ cat /etc/systemd/system/network-wlan-bridge.service
[Unit]
Description=Wireless-AP-Bridge
After=network.service
Before=dhcpd.service network-wlan-bridge.service
[Service]
Type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/wlan-bridge.sh start
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
___________________________________________________

[root@srv-rhsoft:~]$ cat /usr/local/bin/wlan-bridge.sh
#!/bin/bash

br="br0"
eth="eth0"
eth_ip="192.168.1.2"
eth_netmask="255.255.255.0"
eth_broadcast="192.168.1.255"

start_bridge () {
 ifconfig $eth 0.0.0.0 promisc up
 brctl addbr $br
 brctl addif $br $eth
 ifconfig $br $eth_ip netmask $eth_netmask broadcast $eth_broadcast up
}


stop_bridge () {
 ifconfig $br down
 brctl delbr $br
 ifconfig $eth $eth_ip netmask $eth_netmask broadcast $eth_broadcast up
}

case "$1" in
 start)
   echo "Starting Bridge"
   start_bridge
   ;;
 stop)
   echo "Stopping Bridge"
   stop_bridge
   ;;
 restart)
   stop_bridge
   sleep 1
   start_bridge
   ;;
 *)
   echo "Usage: $0 {start|stop|restart}" >&2
   exit 1
   ;;
esac
___________________________________________________

[root@srv-rhsoft:~]$ cat /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
# default settings
ctrl_interface=/var/run/hostapd
ctrl_interface_group=0
auth_algs=1
ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
macaddr_acl=1
accept_mac_file=/etc/hostapd/accept

# login-data
ssid=rhsoft-hardened
wpa_passphrase=*******************

# wpa2-only support
wpa=2
rsn_pairwise=CCMP

# local configuration
interface=wlan0
bridge=br0
driver=nl80211
hw_mode=g
ieee80211n=1
wme_enabled=1
wmm_enabled=1
channel=13
country_code=AT

# logging
# 0 = verbose debugging
# 1 = debugging
# 2 = informational messages
# 3 = notification
# 4 = warning
logger_syslog=-1
logger_syslog_level=2

[Reindl Harald]

Am 26.11.2011 22:23, schrieb Bruno Wolff III:
>  On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 18:08:43 +0100,
>    Reindl Harald <h.reindl(a)thelounge.net&gt; wrote:
> >
> > if someone can call a buyable product which is out of the box
> > supported from current fedora-kernels and supports G/N because
> > mit printer in the kitchen supports only G with WPA there will
> > be a way to buy this thing somewhere
>  
>  If you are looking at buying hardware for this, why not consider buying
>  a wireless router and put openwrt on it? It will initially cost a bit
>  more than just buying a dongle, but you'll probably make that back in
>  power savings. 
because it does not interest me

i am having here a wireless router
i want do replace htis device for several reasons

a) all this crap has only 4 ports
b) the homeserver is running 365/24

so i want to get rid of an additional device

so using the homeserver as Ap is power-saving because currently
if need a wireless-router AND a switch additionally to the
always-on-server instead having only a power-savong switch
and the machine

[Bruno Wolff III]

On Sat, Nov 26, 2011 at 18:08:43 +0100,
  Reindl Harald <h.reindl(a)thelounge.net&gt; wrote:
>  
>  if someone can call a buyable product which is out of the box
>  supported from current fedora-kernels and supports G/N because
>  mit printer in the kitchen supports only G with WPA there will
>  be a way to buy this thing somewhere 
If you are looking at buying hardware for this, why not consider buying
a wireless router and put openwrt on it? It will initially cost a bit
more than just buying a dongle, but you'll probably make that back in
power savings.

[Tom Horsley]

On Sat, 26 Nov 2011 17:25:16 +0100
Reindl Harald wrote:

>  hi
>  
>  does anybody know what hardware and configuraion-steps are needed to get
>  a fedora-pc working as WLAN access-point with WPA/WPA2 
Good luck - you'll need it :-).

http://linuxwireless.org/ has some tables of devices that have
AP support, but they tend to list things like chipsets, which
are difficult if not impossible to correlate with products
you can buy.

I have a little wireless USB dongle I got to sort-of work, but
I have to try plugging it in and initializing the software
two or three times before it actually works. You can find
my saga here:

http://home.comcast.net/~tomhorsley/hardware/rtl8192cu/rtl8192cu.html

One thing I found with the USB dongle was that I had to
disable NetworkManager, or it would try and grab the wlan
interface and set it up as a client.

[Reindl Harald]

Am 26.11.2011 17:44, schrieb Tom Horsley:
>  On Sat, 26 Nov 2011 17:25:16 +0100
>  Reindl Harald wrote:
>  
> > hi
> >
> > does anybody know what hardware and configuraion-steps are needed to get
> > a fedora-pc working as WLAN access-point with WPA/WPA2
>  
>  Good luck - you'll need it :-). 
thank you :-)

>  http://linuxwireless.org/ has some tables of devices that have
>  AP support, but they tend to list things like chipsets, which
>  are difficult if not impossible to correlate with products
>  you can buy. 
that is exactly my problem

if someone can call a buyable product which is out of the box
supported from current fedora-kernels and supports G/N because
mit printer in the kitchen supports only G with WPA there will
be a way to buy this thing somewhere

>  I have a little wireless USB dongle I got to sort-of work, but
>  I have to try plugging it in and initializing the software
>  two or three times before it actually works. You can find
>  my saga here:
>  http://home.comcast.net/~tomhorsley/hardware/rtl8192cu/rtl8192cu.html 
maybe the
sub-thing makes here more troubles as usually
but what can i say since i have never installed such a setup

i would generally pefer a pci-card, here a 3 slots free
and the cards with three antennas are looking fine

what i found some minutes ago:
http://old.tuxorials.de/linux-tipps/allgemeingueltig/52-wlan-accesspoint-...

this sounds quite easy and only a good wlan-card is the missing piece
and some iptables-stuff, but iptables is not really difficult for me

>  One thing I found with the USB dongle was that I had to
>  disable NetworkManager, or it would try and grab the wlan
>  interface and set it up as a client. 
well, this is not the problem, i never use networkmanager

the machine has two GBE-network-cards
one is the public interface and additionally a vmware-bridge
for two virtual machines and the other one for the local network

a hughe ip-tables-script does routing/masquerading as also route a
permanently active openvpn-connection and my vmware-nat into the LAN,
blocks china and russia, so this machine does all i need perfectly and
that is why i want to replace the "old" hardware-wlan-router with a
8-port-switch lying around here and  finally have my whole IT in one box

if there is fire take it and run, sip-phone, keyboard and screen you can
buy everywhere later :-)

speaking about a brand new Core(TM) i7-2600 with 16 GB RAM
and 4x2 TB as RAID10 there should be no need for additional
hardware the next years :-)

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  Hardware Adresse 3C:D9:2B:65:95:9F
          inet Adresse:192.168.1.2  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Maske:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:223032 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:195107 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          Kollisionen:0 Sendewarteschlangenlänge:1000
          RX bytes:41146088 (39.2 MiB)  TX bytes:70225632 (66.9 MiB)
          Interrupt:20 Speicher:fe700000-fe720000

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  Hardware Adresse 00:50:8D:B5:CC:DE
          inet Adresse:84.113.45.179  Bcast:84.113.45.255  Maske:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:27454880 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:14550464 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          Kollisionen:0 Sendewarteschlangenlänge:1000
          RX bytes:24185678885 (22.5 GiB)  TX bytes:3678721888 (3.4 GiB)
          Interrupt:16 Speicher:fe6c0000-fe6e0000

lo        Link encap:Lokale Schleife
          inet Adresse:127.0.0.1  Maske:255.0.0.0
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:8590537 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:8590537 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          Kollisionen:0 Sendewarteschlangenlänge:0
          RX bytes:7682947490 (7.1 GiB)  TX bytes:7682947490 (7.1 GiB)

tap0      Link encap:Ethernet  Hardware Adresse A2:EB:CE:2F:48:A8
          inet Adresse:10.0.0.241  Bcast:10.0.0.255  Maske:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:707920 errors:0 dropped:19384 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:748660 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          Kollisionen:0 Sendewarteschlangenlänge:100
          RX bytes:242962206 (231.7 MiB)  TX bytes:65362520 (62.3 MiB)

vmnet8    Link encap:Ethernet  Hardware Adresse 00:50:56:C0:00:08
          inet Adresse:192.168.196.1  Bcast:192.168.196.255  Maske:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:651835 errors:0 dropped:36 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:582388 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          Kollisionen:0 Sendewarteschlangenlänge: