[pkg-wpa-devel] Bug#600589: hostapd + bridge for post 2.6.32

Michael Karcher debian at mkarcher.dialup.fu-berlin.de
Sat Feb 5 11:45:59 UTC 2011


Hello,

your upgraded kernel is the cause of the problem: As bridging WLAN STA
interfaces (not access point) does not work, the WLAN interface can only
be part of a bridge when it already is in master mode from 2.6.33
onwards. So this does not apply to the default squeeze kernel.

If you first start hostapd and then add to the bridge, the addition to
the bridge works, but as soon as you add the WLAN to the bridge, the
EAPOL replies are received on the bridge interface instead of the WLAN
interface. If the bridge was not set up before you start the bridge,
hostapd fails to monitor the bridge interface for EAPOL replies, and
thus won't receive them, even if the bridge is created later on.

There are two possible solutions:
1) create bridge first, then start hostapd, then add the interfaces to
the bridge (difficult to implement as creation + adding interfaces is
done in the same ifupdown script in debian)
2) Upgrade to hostapd v0.7.1 or later. These versions of hostapd deal
better with newer kernels in that they can add the interface to the
bridge by themselves. hostapd v0.7.3 is available in experimental.

The following interfaces works for me with hostapd from experimental:

# /etc/network/interfaces -- configuration file for ifup(8), ifdown(8)

auto lo eth0 wlan0 br0
iface lo inet loopback

iface eth0 inet manual
iface wlan0 inet manual

iface br0 inet dhcp
	bridge_fd 0
	# hostapd will add wlan0 to the bridge... don't list it here
	bridge_ports eth0
	bridge_hw 00:0f:b5:80:d3:25
	hostapd /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf

And in /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf I have

interface=wlan0
bridge=br0

Regards,
  Michael Karcher






More information about the Pkg-wpa-devel mailing list