HostAP

From Smop.co.uk

Intial setup

To use hostap on the Xen host I had to perform the following steps:

• rmmod orinico*
• modprobe hostap_plx ignore_cis=1
• brctl addif intbr0 eth2
• ifconfig eth2 up
• ifrename eth2ap_rename eth2ap

The orinoco devices were removed.

The ignore_cis parameter is set in /etc/modutils/apb:

# used to make modules.conf, but not used by modprobe
options hostap_plx ignore_cis=1

and in /etc/modprobe.d/apb:

# not used to make modules.conf but is used by modprobe
options hostap_plx ignore_cis=1

The ifrename is now performed in the prexen script described in Xen.

Firmware upgrade

The other day the wireless lost the primary firmware (it could hang the box on boot) I was also receiving message like these:

wifi0: NIC: id=0x8008 v1.0.0
wifi0: PRI: id=0x15 v0.3.0
Jwifi0: hfa384x_get_rid - RID len mismatch: rid=0xfd20, len=214 (expected 8)
Could not get RID for component STA
wifi0: Failed to read STA f/w version - only Primary f/w present

and

wifi0: NIC: id=0x8008 v1.0.0
wifi0: PRI: id=0x15 v0.0.0               (should be v0.3.0)
wifi0: STA: id=0x1f v1.7.1
wifi0: fid allocate, len=2364 - timeout
wifi0: Using shorter TX FID (1600 bytes)
...
wlan0ap: hfa384x_cmd: entry still in list? (entry=c0a9af20, type=0, res=0)
wlan0ap: hfa384x_cmd: command was not completed (res=0, entry=c0a9af20, type=0, cmd=0x0001, param0=0x0000, EVSTAT=8000 INTEN=0010)
wlan0ap: MAC port 0 enabling failed
wlan0ap: could not enable MAC port

Using Jun Sun's excellent guide:

• pull down: http://www.red-bean.com/~proski/firmware/Latest-prism.tar.bz2
• for my cards (NICID of 0x8008) I used the table:
  • primary firmware: p4* -> p40003c0.hex
  • secondary firmware: s1* -> s1010701.hex
• test run: prism2_srec -v wlan0 <primary firmware> <station firmware>
• real run: prism2_srec -v -f wlan0 <primary firmware> <station firmware>

Configuration

/etc/hostapd/hostapd.accept lists acceptable MAC addresses (this is _not_ secure).

/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf contains the main configuration parameters:

# AP netdevice name (without 'ap' prefix, i.e., wlan0 uses wlan0ap for
# management frames)
interface=wlan0

# SSID to be used in IEEE 802.11 management frames
ssid=rhubarb

# Station MAC address -based authentication
# 0 = accept unless in deny list
# 1 = deny unless in accept list
# 2 = use external RADIUS server (accept/deny lists are searched first)
macaddr_acl=1

I need to go and have another attempt at turning on WPA - I was unsuccessful in getting it working last time I tried.