hostAP and wds with madwifi

Smith, Bruce bsmith
Mon Sep 24 10:03:25 PDT 2007

I've used it in this mode although I am having an issue with moving data.
I first run wpa_supplicant on the sta intf and wait for association, then run hostapd on the other interface.  I then can see it from a second wifi card and can associate.  There was an issue with it not sending beacons but I don't remember the exact configuration but anytime I use this sequence it works fine.  
So the order of my bringup:
wlanconfig ath create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode ap
creates ath0
wlanconfig ath create wlandev wifi0 wlanmode sta nosbeacon
creates ath1
iwpriv ath0 wds 1
iwpriv ath1 wds 1
ifconfig ath0 up
ifconfig ath1 up
brctl addbr br0
brctl addif br0 ath0
brctl addif br0 ath1
brctl setfd br0 1
ifconfig br0
wpa_supplicant -Dmadwifi -iath1 -c /etc/wpa.conf
wait for association
hostapd /etc/hostapd.conf
I used a 2 wifi card at eth0 and ran wpa_supplicant on it to attach to the new AP defined in /etc/hostapd.conf.  You might try leaving ath0 down until wpa_supplicant is done then bring up ath0 and hostapd.  
I've also found the madwifi driver to be unstable, causing my machines to freeze.  Only in wds mode, otherwise the driver seems sound.


From: at on behalf of Micro Cool
Sent: Mon 9/24/2007 7:21 AM
To: hostap at
Subject: hostAP and wds with madwifi

I am trying to get wpa_supplicant and hostapd to work for wds with the madwifi driver but I have not been having much luck.  I am aware that generally wds is not supported for 11i key managment method but since madwifi sets their wds links up as a station and a AP I thought it might be possible if you run hostAP on the AP interface and wpa_supplicant on the station interface.  However when I tried this for some reason whenever I bring the AP interface up with hostAP it never beacons.  Thought this was odd so I tried bringing the AP interface up first and then bring the station interface up and indeed the AP did beacon but as soon as the station linked it stopped.
Does anyone have any thoughts why this is happening?


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