Soft AP (hostapd & dnsmasq)

**ctownstud00** · September 22nd, 2012

I have a soft access point set up via hostapd and dnsmasq in my Ubuntu 10.04 gnome environment. The problem is that after I log in, the access point wireless device tries to connect to the nearest open wireless network. When this happens, it seems to break my dnsmasq, because when I attempt to connect to my soft AP with a wireless device, it won't assign a proper IP--it just gives a random IP.

Is there a way to stop the wireless device that runs the soft AP from trying to auto-connect to open wireless networks after I log in?

Thanks

**ctownstud00** · September 26th, 2012

Can anyone help me on this one?

**ctownstud00** · October 3rd, 2012

Bump.

**ctownstud00** · October 9th, 2012

Bump! Please!

**ctownstud00** · October 16th, 2012

Bump?

**ctownstud00** · October 19th, 2012

Tried adding a couple of lines to /etc/rc.local that turns off the internal wireless card, then calls the software AP.

Code:

sudo ifdown wlan0
sudo ap_ctl --start
sudo ap_ctl --ics

Still doing testing, but first run, it seemed to work.

**ctownstud00** · October 19th, 2012

Could I use $ifconfig instead of $ifdown ? What is the difference there? Also, once I use $ifdown in the rc.local file, I can't figure out how to re-enable the interface. Could anyone share some advice or insight here? What is the best way to do this?

**ctownstud00** · October 29th, 2012

This is still not working properly. It doesn't keep the DHCP assignments going right when both wireless cards try to connect to the network upon startup. Can anyone advise?

**cellarweasel** · October 29th, 2012

So Ctown, which implementation of hostapd are you using.
After looking it up(wikipedia) it looks like there are flavors of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostapd

Also it seems that you are having a fight with network manager. It may be that you need to figure out what the network manager applet is doing because it will overwrite alot of files dynamically which in your senario are already being used by dnsmasq/hostapd. I would just send an email to the network manager mailing list asking what kind of interaction with dnsmasq/hostapd is happening and whether or not you should completely disable Network Manager or if it can co-exist with your set up.

-cellarweasel