hostapd, b43, nl80211 driver, WPA: report, and two questions

[Jouni Malinen]

On Fri, May 02, 2008 at 10:43:48AM +0200, Francis Galiegue wrote:

> I finally managed to get hostapd to work with the b43 driver. Components:
> 
> * wireless-testing kernel tree, with two patches from Johannes Berg
> (*-mac80211-fix-debugfs-key.patch, *-allow-ap-vlan-modes.patch);
> * libnl 1.1;
> * git master branch of hostapd;
> * using nl80211 driver;
> * WPA PSK.

Nice to hear that.

> * if the b43 network interface is within a bridge (the bridge's MAC
> address is _not_ the one of the b43 FWIW), unencrypted works, however
> WPA does not; is this a hostapd only problem, or does the kernel need
> some more support for this? Would it be helpful that I provide some
> logs (I have a problem with the 25k message limit though, since logs
> are HUGE with hostapd in debug mode)?

Did you configure both the WLAN ifname (interface=...) and bridge ifname
(bridge=...) in hostapd.conf? hostapd needs to know the bridge interface
name in order to be able to send and receive EAPOL frames properly. Feel
free to email a debug log file directly to me (j at w1.fi) if needed due to
message length limits on the mailing list.

> * with WPA PSK working, I get this loop in hostapd's stdout:
> 
> ----
> wlan0: STA 00:15:00:35:12:e0 IEEE 802.11: disassociated
> wlan0: STA 00:15:00:35:12:e0 IEEE 802.11: authenticated
> # accounting session number increases by 1 every iteration
> wlan0: STA 00:15:00:35:12:e0 IEEE 802.11: associated (aid 1,
> accounting session 481A24F5-0000003C)
> wlan0: STA 00:15:00:35:12:e0 WPA: pairwise key handshake completed (WPA)
> wlan0: STA 00:15:00:35:12:e0 WPA: group key handshake completed (WPA)
> ----
> 
> is this expected?

If that happens constantly, no, I would not expect it. I do not know
what is triggered the disconnection based on this log excerpt, though.
Anyway, if you have not configured hostapd to rekey frequently, the
connection should remain up without any additional associations at this
point.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA