LinuxQuestions.org - uncooperative hostapd causes mental insanity

I'm having some problems with hostapd and bridging a wireless to a wired network that are driving me insane! I'm running Debian Sarge with a 2.6.8-2 kernel and an Atheros chipset on the wireless card.

I'm able to bring up the access point with #iwconfig ath0 essid cabe and connect to it, but I cannot ping another computer on the wired network. It's as if the bridge is not working. However, by some miracle I DID have hostapd working at one point, and at the time I could ping a wired machine from the wireless and vice versa. I have no idea why hostapd broke but now every time I try to run #/etc/init.d/hostapd start I get Starting advanced IEEE 802.11 management: hostapd...failed. I've looked in both the /tmp/hostapd.dump and /var/log/daemon.log files but there is nothing, even when debug=4 in hostapd.conf. I have started with a completely default hostapd.conf, only changing the ssid, driver, and adding in the bridge var (this was not in the original hostapd.conf, but somewhere in my many painful hours of reading about this topic it was suggested that this var is required so hostapd will know it's part of a bridge).

I am at my wits end with this and am about to kill someone, so please help reduce the homicide rate and overpopulation of the jail system by helping me figure this out! :p

Here are the relevant files:

/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf (with all commented lines removed)

Code:

bridge=br0

interface=ath0

driver=madwifi

logger_syslog=-1

logger_syslog_level=2

logger_stdout=-1

logger_stdout_level=2

debug=0

dump_file=/tmp/hostapd.dump

ssid=cabe

macaddr_acl=0

auth_algs=0

eap_authenticator=0

eapol_key_index_workaround=0

/etc/network/interfaces

Code:

auto lo eth1 ath0 br0



iface lo inet loopback



iface eth1 inet dhcp



iface ath0 inet manual

        pre-up wlanconfig ath0 destroy

        pre-up wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode ap



iface br0 inet static

        bridge_ports eth0 ath0

        address 192.168.0.2

        netmask 255.255.255.0

        network 192.168.0.0

        broadcast 192.168.0.255