Turning my laptop into an access point

[jserink]

Hi All:

Ok, kids' school holidays and the WHOLE gang is at a resort for a few days...hotel has only a single wired connection in our room to support mummy with her Korean dramas on the internet (laptop with windows) and the kids' ipads and daddy's late night Samsung galaxy. "Daddy, why no Internet?".

Hey, I run Gentoo Linux on my laptop, lets put this thing to work.

Ok, I'm on a Dell Precision 4600 with this wireless card:
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 (rev 35)

Which uses this module:
iwlwifi

Problem is, when you try:
iwconfig wlp3s mode master...
it fails like this:
jserinki7 linux # iwconfig wlp3s mode master
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
SET failed on device wlp3s ; No such device.

And as this shows:
iw list:

Supported interface modes:
* IBSS
* managed
* monitor

it doesn't support being an AP...just my luck. but wait, in my computer bag I have an old Edimax USB 802.11.bg 2.4G wireless thinggy...
Plug it in, cool.
Followed advice here on how to set things up: http://nims11.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/hostapd-the-linux-way-to-create-virtual-wifi-access-point/

jserinki7 ap # cat /home/jserink/linux/ap/hostapd-test.conf
interface=wlp0s29u1u2
driver=nl80211
ssid=daddylaptop
channel=6
hw_mode=g
macaddr_acl=0
auth_algs=1
ignore_broadcast_ssid=0
wpa=3
wpa_passphrase=mommyanddaddy
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=TKIP
rsn_pairwise=CCMP
jserinki7 ap #

Fired up hostapd like this:
hostapd hostapd-test.conf

and got this error in /var/log/everything/current
May 24 12:28:04 [kernel] [ 1333.206006] phy1 -> rt2x00lib_request_firmware: Info - Loading firmware file 'rt73.bin'.
May 24 12:28:04 [kernel] [ 1333.208338] phy1 -> rt2x00lib_request_firmware: Error - Failed to request Firmware.
May 24 12:33:28 [kernel] [ 1656.878991] usb 1-1: USB disconnect, device number 2

ok, it needs FW. Tried to emerge this:
net-wireless/ralink-firmware which was masked but it died from plenty of errors....ralink has been bought out so their FW site is different but then once finding the required files and dumping them in /usr/portage/distfiles the ebuild burps and farts on the unzipping of stuff.....
enough.

Google rt73.zip and get plenty of hits, downloaded it, expanded it and copied over rt73.bin to /lib/firmware, plug the unit in a away we go!

Great, DNS masq setup:
jserinki7 linux # cat /etc/dnsmasq.conf
#Name:Default
#Type:DNSMASQ
interface=wlp0s29u1u2
dhcp-range=192.168.19.2,192.168.19.10,1h
server=192.168.19.1

And that's it, it all works.
So, just to review, did the following:
1. plug the Edimax USB thinggy in,
2. Assign the IP 192.168.19.1 to the new interface wlp0s29u1u2,
3. Start up, as root, hostapd from the command line with the above config file,
4. Start dnsmasq like this: /etc/init.d/dnsmasq start
5. Push in the Ip tables rules to make it go:
echo "1" > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -o enp0s25 -j MASQUERADE
iptables -A FORWARD -j ACCEPT
iptables -A INPUT -i wlp0s29u1u2 -j ACCEPT

and kids and mummy are happy.

its all good!

Cheers,
john

[666threesixes666]

can you clean this up and post it as a wiki please?