Bug#491731: madwifi-source: 0.9.4+r3698 and later no longer work in master mode with hostapd and WPA

[Andrew Baumann]

Hi Kel,

On Tuesday 22 July 2008 08:29:29 Kel Modderman wrote:
> Is wireless interface in a bridge?

No, it's not. The relevant stanza from /etc/network/interfaces is:

iface ath0 inet static
        madwifi-base wifi0
        madwifi-mode ap
        wireless-channel 9
        wireless-essid foo
        address 192.168.0.1
        netmask 255.255.255.0

For the record, hostapd.conf has:
interface=ath0
driver=madwifi
ssid=foo
country_code=CH
hw_mode=g
channel=9
beacon_int=100
dtim_period=2
max_num_sta=255
rts_threshold=2347
fragm_threshold=2346
macaddr_acl=0
auth_algs=3
ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
wme_enabled=1
wme_ac_bk_cwmin=4
wme_ac_bk_cwmax=10
wme_ac_bk_aifs=7
wme_ac_bk_txop_limit=0
wme_ac_bk_acm=0
wme_ac_be_aifs=3
wme_ac_be_cwmin=4
wme_ac_be_cwmax=10
wme_ac_be_txop_limit=0
wme_ac_be_acm=0
wme_ac_vi_aifs=2
wme_ac_vi_cwmin=3
wme_ac_vi_cwmax=4
wme_ac_vi_txop_limit=94
wme_ac_vi_acm=0
wme_ac_vo_aifs=2
wme_ac_vo_cwmin=2
wme_ac_vo_cwmax=3
wme_ac_vo_txop_limit=47
wme_ac_vo_acm=0
eapol_key_index_workaround=0
eap_server=0
own_ip_addr=127.0.0.1
wpa=1
wpa_passphrase=bar
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=TKIP CCMP
wpa_group_rekey=600

> I had no problem setting up ath0 in ap mode using hostapd for wpa2 auth,
> using current madwifi + hostapd packages, dnsmasq for DNS + dhcp and
> iptables script for NAT of ethernet connection.

Well, I'm using dhcp3-server and bind, but this seems to be a lower-level 
problem. It seems only to have directly affected the squeezebox stuff (my 
laptop is still able to connect), which is odd, but looking at packet 
captures I see a lot of short packets and other weirdness, which leads me to 
suspect that the new version is corrupting or dropping packets.

> Regressions like this really suck. Sadly if we go back to 0.9.4 many users
> have no hardware support at all... And its crunch time for Lenny release...

I guess I'll just have to hang onto 0.9.4 for now and hope they figure it out 
eventually upstream.

Cheers,
Andrew