hostapd cannot initialize madwifi drivers

ichrispa · 11-22-2009, 08:12 AM

Hello everyone,

I have the following problem:

I want to use a TP-Link WN651G as an accesspoint. The card uses an atheros chipset. I have compiled an installed the drivers using the madwifi-0.9.4-r4100-20090929. Manual configuration of the interfaces using iwconfig/wlanconfig/iwpriv works with no errors.

As the hostapd that comes with Debian Lenny does not support madwifi, I recompiled hostapd-0.6.9 modifying the following lines to be:

Code:

CONFIG_DRIVER_MADWIFI=y
CFLAGS += -I../../madwifi-0.9.4-r4100-20090929

apart from a linker error (hostap wasn't being linked against libdl correctly) hostapd compiled ok.

However when I try to run hostapd on ath0 I get the following error

Code:

Configuration file: /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
ctrl_interface=0
Configure bridge 1 for EAPOL traffic
ioctl[SIGCGIFINDEX]: No such device
madwifi driver initialization failed
ath0: Unable to setup interface

I am not sure if the error is attributed to the bridge or not (sample config says to enable the option for madwifi). I have tried to create a bridge manually and add ath0 to it with no avail.

If anyone has seen this kind of error on hostapd before, please give me a hand.

thx

Elv13 · 11-23-2009, 09:05 PM

You can use ATH5K or ATH9K driver. They are the madwifi rewrite. In Ubuntu they are not usable (terrible signal quality), but on Fedora they are much better than MadWifi was when it was dropped. If you need advanced (*hacker*) features, MadWifi still a good choice, but for every other use, ATH5K/9K are better.

*ATH5K/9K are present in any recent kernel by default, no compilation required anymore.

ichrispa · 11-29-2009, 12:10 PM

Thanks for the input Elv13, but that was not the problem.

In order for hostapd to configure an interface, it must already exist and be up. So, after I created my AP, set it up (not described in detail here), added a bridge and bridged my interfaces, all I had to do was bring it all up before startig hostapd.

wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode ap
iwconfig ath0 channel 1
ifconfig ath0 10.0.0.5 up
brctl addbr br0
brctl ifadd br0 ath0
brctl ifadd br0 eth0
ifconfig eth0 10.0.0.25 up
ifconfig br0 up

Of course, now hostapd is hanging on some other issues, but they are not related to this thread.