AP FC8

From M1Research

Contents 1 WiFi Hardware 2 Generic Installation 3 Building/configuring driver 4 Network configuration

WiFi Hardware

As we are going build WPA protected Access Point it's required authorization daemon supports our hardware. Authorization software based on hostapd. As seen from hostapd's home page it support chipsets/drivers:

• Host AP driver for Prism2/2.5/3
• madwifi (Atheros ar521x)
• Prism54.org (Prism GT/Duette/Indigo)

After some research on our local PC components market we choose D-link DWA-520 that is Atheros chipset based:

[root@dev-1 ~]# lspci -vvv
--skipped--
01:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212/AR5213 Multiprotocol MAC/baseband processor (rev 01)
        Subsystem: D-Link System Inc Unknown device 3a73
        Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV+ VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx-
        Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx-
        Latency: 168 (2500ns min, 7000ns max), Cache Line Size: 32 bytes
        Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 23
        Region 0: Memory at ff8f0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
        Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2
                Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1- D2- AuxCurrent=375mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
                Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=2 PME-
        Kernel driver in use: ath_pci
        Kernel modules: ath_pci
--skipped--

and supported by madwifi drivers.

Generic Installation

Generic installation steps:

• install WiFi pci board
• install additional ethernet adapter (we want 2 adapters: 1st WAN, 2nd LOCAL LAN)
• install minimal Fedora Core 8 installation
• update all installed Fedora packeges
• install required packages for building madwifi drivers and hostapd:
  • gcc
  • openssl-devel
  • kernel package development (in my case kernel-devel-2.6.25.9-40.fc8)
  • dhcp
  • bind, bind-chroot
  • bridge-utils
• download to /usr/local/src madwifi driver and hostapd source code:
  • madwifi-0.9.4.tar.gz
  • hostapd-0.6.3.tar.gz

Building/configuring driver

Unpack madwifi-0.9.4.tar.gz to /usr/local/src:

[root@dev-1 ~]# cd /usr/local/src
[root@dev-1 src]# gzip -cd madwifi-0.9.4.tar.gz | tar xf -

Goto source code directory, build and install:

[root@dev-1 src]# cd madwifi-0.9.4
[root@dev-1 madwifi-0.9.4]# make
Checking requirements... ok.
Checking kernel configuration... ok.
make -C /lib/modules/2.6.25.9-40.fc8/build SUBDIRS=/usr/local/src/madwifi-0.9.4 modules
make[1]: Entering directory `/usr/src/kernels/2.6.25.9-40.fc8-i686'
  CC [M]  /usr/local/src/madwifi-0.9.4/ath/if_ath.o
--skipped--
gcc -o ath_info -g -O2 -Wall ath_info.c
make[1]: Leaving directory `/usr/local/src/madwifi-0.9.4/tools'
[root@dev-1 madwifi-0.9.4]# make install

Remove old ath5k driver:

[root@dev-1 madwifi-0.9.4]# rm -f -r -d /lib/modules/2.6.25.9-40.fc8/kernel/drivers/net/wireless/ath5k
[root@dev-1 madwifi-0.9.4]# depmod -a

Check /etc/modprobe.conf contains correct options for new driver and wlan0 associated with ath_pci driver:

alias eth0 e100
alias eth0 eth1
#alias wlan0 ath5k
alias wlan0 ath_pci
options ath_pci autocreate=ap
alias scsi_hostadapter libata
alias scsi_hostadapter1 ata_piix

Network configuration

Setup ethernet adaptor eth0 for WAN interface and bridge (eth1 + wlan0) for local network.

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-br0

DEVICE=br0
TYPE=Bridge
BOOTPROTO=static
IPADDR=192.168.1.1
NETMASK=255.255.255.0
ONBOOT=yes
DELAY=0
STP=off

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

DEVICE=eth0
BOOTPROTO=static
BROADCAST=10.1.255.255
IPADDR=10.1.5.190
NETMASK=255.255.0.0
NETWORK=10.1.0.0
ONBOOT=yes

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth1

DEVICE=eth1
TYPE=ETHER
BRIDGE=br0
ONBOOT=yes

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlan0

DEVICE=wlan0
BRIDGE=br0
ONBOOT=yes
MODE=master
ESSID="home-home"

Please note that our AP network ESSID we setted to home-home.