Setting up a WIFI AP via hostapd

[MH6]

Has anyone been successful with using this RTL8723bu driver to setup a WIFI access point via hostapd?

I can see the network from my client device, but every time it tries to connect, it fails with the following line in dmesg:

RTL871X: ap recv disassoc reason code(8)

This is the same no matter what client I use (Android phone, Windows PC, etc.)

This reason code maps to "Disassociated because sending station is leaving (or has left) BSS". Which doesn't make sense in this context as the phone is stationary with a strong signal. The module works fine as a WIFI client, just not as an AP.

At this point I'm not sure if it's an issue with the driver, hostapd, or some configuration setting somewhere.

Hostapd is using driver=rtl871xdrv

[mkborg]

We use hostapd with driver=nl80211 to host access point on rtl8723bu chip. It works.

[MH6]

Ok thanks for letting me know @mkborg

Unfortunately using the stock hostapd binary in Raspbian with driver=nl80211 doesn't even bring up the network at all. Did you have to build the rtl8723bu driver with any particular settings, i.e. CONFIG_AP_WOWLAN?

nl80211: interface wlan0 in phy phy0 rfkill: initial event: idx=0 type=2 op=0 soft=0 hard=0 rfkill: initial event: idx=1 type=1 op=0 soft=0 hard=0 nl80211: Using driver-based off-channel TX nl80211: Add own interface ifindex 4 nl80211: Set mode ifindex 4 iftype 3 (AP) nl80211: Create interface iftype 6 (MONITOR) Failed to create interface mon.wlan0: -19 (No such device) nl80211: Failed to set interface wlan0 into AP mode netlink: Operstate: linkmode=0, operstate=6 nl80211: Set mode ifindex 4 iftype 2 (STATION) nl80211 driver initialization failed.

My hostapd.conf:

interface=wlan0 driver=nl80211 ssid=Pi hw_mode=g channel=11 macaddr_acl=0 auth_algs=1 ignore_broadcast_ssid=0 wpa=2 wpa_passphrase=password wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK wpa_pairwise=TKIP rsn_pairwise=CCMP

I will keep working on the problem.

[lwfinger]

Make certain that configuration symbol CONFIG_IOCTL_CFG80211 is defined in your build.

[MH6]

@lwfinger It seems to be defined in autoconf.h

Do I need to use the CONFIG_AUTOCFG_CP flag when I build? It is set to no by default.

I as of yet have made no changes to the driver from the current repo version. Just did a git clone and make/make install.

[lwfinger]

Do not use CONFIG_AUTOCFG_CP. If you do, autoconfig.h will be replaced every time you run make, and every source file will need to be recompiled. That is a lot of work for nothing.

[MH6]

@lwfinger Yeah I realized that after the fact when I actually looked at what the flag did. Do you think its an issue with hostapd itself? I might see if I can compile hostapd from source.

Edit: Compiling hostapd from source did not change anything.

Edit 2: Like a dummy I just ran hostapd and not ./hostapd, so it was still running the old version. Running the hostapd I actually compiled worked beautifully. I've now used make install to replace the old version and I'm no longer having any problems. So thanks for your help guys.

If anyone has this problem in the future, I downloaded hostapd source from https://w1.fi/hostapd/, installed libnl-dev using

sudo apt-get install libnl-dev

and ran make inside the hostapd-2.5/hostapd folder. This was done on Raspbian running on a Raspberry Pi Compute Module.

Simple fix to a problem that has been plaguing me all day. Thanks again, and thanks for maintaining these drivers.