If you know how to do it, most things are simple. Figuring out how to make my Asrock ION 330HT-BD (running Ubuntu Karmic) a wireless access point took me a couple of hours. For my own reference and maybe to save you some time I wrote down all steps.
How-to
- Check wireless adapter type
- lspci -v | grep Network
- Should be AR9285
- lspci -v | grep Network
- Enable IP forwarding
- sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf
- Uncomment
- net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1
- Uncomment
- Live change
- sudo echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
- Check
- cat /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
- sudo gedit /etc/sysctl.conf
- Give wireless adapter a static address
- sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces
- Add code below
- Live change
- sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart
- Check
- ifconfig wlan0
- ifconfig wlan0
- sudo gedit /etc/network/interfaces
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
auto wlan0
iface wlan0 inet static
address 192.168.0.1
netmask 255.255.255.0
broadcast 192.168.0.255
- Download latest Linux wireless drivers (currently version 2.6)
- Extract archive
- Build/install
- cd compat-wireless-*
- ./scripts/driver-select ath9k
- make
- sudo make unload
- sudo make install
- Redo when new kernel
- Live change
- sudo modprobe ath9k
- sudo modprobe ath9k
- Check
- grep ath9k /var/log/syslog
- grep ath9k /var/log/syslog
- Install hostapd
- sudo apt-get install hostapd
- sudo gedit /etc/default/hostapd
- Uncomment
- RUN_DAEMON="yes"
- DAEMON_CONF="/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf"
- Uncomment
- sudo gedit /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
- Add
- driver=nl80211
- Change
- ssid=<name>
- hw_mode=g
- auth_algs=1
- wpa=2
- wpa_passphrase=<password>
- wpa_pairwise=TKIP
- Add
- Live change
- sudo /etc/init.d/hostapd restart
- Check
- grep hostapd /var/log/syslog
- grep hostapd /var/log/syslog
- Install dnsmasq
- sudo apt-get install dnsmasq
- sudo gedit /etc/default/dnsmasq
- Uncomment
- DNSMASQ_OPTS="--conf-file=/etc/dnsmasq.conf"
- Comment
- #CONFIG_DIR=/etc/dnsmasq.d
- Uncomment
- sudo gedit /etc/dnsmasq.conf
- Add
- interface=wlan0
- dhcp-range=192.168.0.2,192.168.0.127,12h
- Add
- Live change
- sudo /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart
- sudo /etc/init.d/dnsmasq restart
- Check
- grep dnsmasq /var/log/syslog
- grep dnsmasq /var/log/syslog
- Routing
- Give the Asrock a static IP 192.168.1.x
- Preferable by your local DHCP server (based on MAC address)
- Add a static route 192.168.0.0/255.255.255.0 > 192.168.1.x
- In your modem/router
- Give the Asrock a static IP 192.168.1.x
- Now you should be able to connect
Hi Marcel,
Nice blog! I have done basically the same thing and found this posting very informative. I’m using a Dell Mini 9 running Ubuntu 9.10. It is acting as a NAT router/firewall (UFW with NAT rules), DHCP server (dhcp3-server) and AP (hostapd with Atheros AR928x based card). My question is related to the performance of your AP. While my AP configuration seems to work for the most part, my clients drop their connection regularly. Based on syslog this seems to be due to some kind of deauthentication/authentication issue. The only way to get the clients to reconnect is to manually restart hostapd.
I’m curious to know if you have seen this behavior on your AP as well. If you have, how have you resolved the issue?
Thanks!
Actually I haven’t used the access point very much, because it appeared to be unstable when I use NFS (the PC/Ubuntu stops responding completely; this doesn’t happen when I use the wired connection) and the wireless range was limited (the Asrock has no external antenna).
I didn’t see your deauthentication/authentication problem. Maybe it has to do with encryption. I used WPA2 only.