Bug 151764

Summary:	Unable to turn madwifi-ng driven card into access point
Product:	[openSUSE] SUSE Linux 10.1	Reporter:	Alexander Lavrinenko <lavrinenko_alex>
Component:	Network	Assignee:	Joachim Gleissner <joachim.gleissner>
Status:	RESOLVED WONTFIX	QA Contact:	E-mail List <qa-bugs>
Severity:	Enhancement
Priority:	P5 - None	CC:	mvidner
Version:	Beta 3
Target Milestone:	---
Hardware:	x86
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Found By:	Other	Services Priority:
Business Priority:		Blocker:	---
Marketing QA Status:	---	IT Deployment:	---
Attachments:	/var/log/YaST2 contents

Description Alexander Lavrinenko 2006-02-17 11:35:43 UTC

Hello,

I have "D-Link DWL-G520 Wireless PCI Adapter rev. B" Wi-Fi card that is driven by madwifi-ng driver. Besides that my office PC has wired LAN card (realtek). I decided to turn my PC into wireless access point since I have several centrino laptops in the office. Unfortunately it's not possible to do this with YaST - even if it offers "Master" mode for this card, it doesn't work and card is always in "Managed" state. In order to turn master mode I have to manually enter the following commands:
# wlanconfig ath0 destroy
# wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode ap
After that card turns into AP state. Please provide YaST option to configure AP-capable Wi-Fi cards as access points.

Thanks.

Comment 1 Michael Gross 2006-02-17 13:18:19 UTC

Please describe what exactly you did (steps in the configuration) and how exactly it failed (any messages). Also attach the logfiles located in /var/log/YaST2 as tarball. Thanks.

Comment 2 Alexander Lavrinenko 2006-02-21 07:06:43 UTC

I edited network card in yast: network devices -> network card -> ifup method -> choose D-Link DWL-G520 from list and press "edit", then press "next", choose "master" in upper drop-down menu, and press "next", "next" and so on until yast applet closes. After yast restarts network it still shows as "managed" mode:
alex@swordfish:~> /usr/sbin/iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

wifi0     no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"Host4U"  Nickname:"swordfish"
          Mode:Managed  Frequency:2.452 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power:18 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/94  Signal level=-95 dBm  Noise level=-95 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

sit0      no wireless extensions.

alex@swordfish:~>

Comment 3 Alexander Lavrinenko 2006-02-21 07:07:59 UTC

Created attachment 69431 [details]
/var/log/YaST2 contents

Comment 4 Alexander Lavrinenko 2006-02-21 07:09:35 UTC

I created simple script that turns this card into master mode:
swordfish:~ # cat bin/ap.sh
#!/bin/bash
#
# set Wi-Fi card to access point state

wlanconfig ath0 destroy
wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode ap
swordfish:~ # ./bin/ap.sh
ath0
swordfish:~ # iwconfig
lo        no wireless extensions.

wifi0     no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

sit0      no wireless extensions.

ath0      IEEE 802.11g  ESSID:"Host4U"  Nickname:"swordfish"
          Mode:Master  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: 00:0F:3D:A9:4C:02
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power:18 dBm   Sensitivity=0/3
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:7778-8899-9444-5556-6611-1222-33   Security mode:restricted
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=0/94  Signal level=-95 dBm  Noise level=-95 dBm
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

swordfish:~ #

Comment 5 Michael Gross 2006-02-21 15:12:31 UTC

OK, sorry. I suppose I got this wrong. Reassigning as an enhancement.

Comment 6 Martin Vidner 2006-02-21 17:16:02 UTC

YaST can only work if the underlying system works, in this case sysconfig.
Joachim, what is the shape of this area? If/when it works, reassign back to me.

Comment 7 Joachim Gleissner 2006-02-22 11:58:10 UTC

There is currently no support for that, and the sysconfig design does not allow it to be added easily. One possibility is: YaST creates a udev-rule for auto-creating the VAP station mode interface. Then it needs to generate a ifcfg for that interface (means, configure it by interface name, but AFAIK YaST will configure all network interface by name in the future, is that true?). That also means that YaST needs to be aware of Atheros device maybe having multiple interfaces. Don't know if this is hard to implement. But even with that it won't be possible to configure WPA access points (that's another story). And we also should consider the fact that we do not ship madwifi anymore.

Anyway, it's something for 10.2.

Comment 8 Stefan Behlert 2007-01-30 17:17:50 UTC

We do not ship madwifi anymore, so I do not think we will proceed here. Sorry.