Problem with bridges and wireless NIC's
Bjarke Istrup Pedersen
There is a problem when trying to create a bridge containing a normal
NIC and a wireless NIC, and using hostapd.
The problem is, that it is not possible to create a bridge containing
a wireless NIC, if it hasn't been setup first.
Does anyone have a solution for this?
(The commit that introduced this problem is
ad4bb6f8883a13bb0f65b194dae36c62a02ac779 , reverting it solves the
problem).
For more info, please have a look at this bug report:
http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=298824
Best regards,
Bjarke I. Pedersen
--
To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
the body of a message to majo...@vger.kernel.org
More majordomo info at http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
Please read the FAQ at http://www.tux.org/lkml/
Jouni Malinen
> There is a problem when trying to create a bridge containing a normal
> NIC and a wireless NIC, and using hostapd.
>
> The problem is, that it is not possible to create a bridge containing
> a wireless NIC, if it hasn't been setup first.
>
> Does anyone have a solution for this?
How about first creating the br0, then starting hostapd, and finally
adding wlan0 into br0?
> (The commit that introduced this problem is
> ad4bb6f8883a13bb0f65b194dae36c62a02ac779 , reverting it solves the
> problem).
I don't know whether I would call that a solution, but well..
> For more info, please have a look at this bug report:
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=298824
I'm not sure whether I understood the description correctly, but this
sounds like a limitation in the way the network setup is done. Forcing
br0 to be created with wlan0 before wlan0 has been configured is not
going to work. I would consider removing wlan0 from the static
configuration of br0 and just creating br0 with eth0 with the setup
scripts and allowing hostapd to add wlan0 into br0 once the interface
has been configured properly (support for this was added in hostapd
0.7.1).
--
Jouni Malinen PGP id EFC895FA
Bjarke Istrup Pedersen
Hey,
That sounds interresting, is there any chance that that functionality
can be added to the 0.6.x branch too? (I'm maintaining hostapd in
Gentoo, but cannot stabilize a 0.7.x build, due to it being a
development branch)
Best regards,
Bjarke I. Pedersen
Jouni Malinen
> That sounds interresting, is there any chance that that functionality
> can be added to the 0.6.x branch too? (I'm maintaining hostapd in
> Gentoo, but cannot stabilize a 0.7.x build, due to it being a
> development branch)
While it might be relatively simple to port the bridge setup code into
0.6.x, I'm not that keen on doing it for this particular reason. I'm
recommending 0.7.x branch for all AP functionality with nl80211-based
driver interface and as such, do not really want to promote use of 0.6.x
versions for this.
I started working on porting the driver_nl80211.c changes into the 0.6.x
branch, but that turned up to take way too much effort compared to what
the potential benefit would be. As such, I do not plan on continuing on
this direction and you should be prepared to quite a bit of additional
work on porting non-trivial fixes from hostapd 0.7.x yourself if you
plan on using hostapd 0.6.x in Gentoo with mac80211/nl80211-based
drivers.
Bjarke Istrup Pedersen
Okay, so the best thing to do, is to advise people to reverse the
patch if the need 0.6.x, or use 0.7.x - right?
If so, thats fine with me :-)
Best regards,
Bjarke Istrup Pedersen
Jouni Malinen
> Okay, so the best thing to do, is to advise people to reverse the
> patch if the need 0.6.x, or use 0.7.x - right?
I don't think I would recommend people to reverse the commit that made
kernel reject invalid wlan0 mode in the bridge in general. It should be
possible to reorder network configuration to work with it and if really
not, reverting that change is reasonable only for a device that works as
an AP and uses bridging. Alternatively, whoever needs hostapd 0.6.x for
whatever reason could obviously also backport the hostapd patch for
bridge setup.
Bjarke Istrup Pedersen
Okay, I have recommended people to upgrade to 0.7.1 and configure
hostapd to do the adding to the bridge :-)
Thanks for helping.
Btw. - is there a timeframe for when 0.7.x might go stable? (the WPS
stuff is really interresting) :-)