hostapd git with rt73usb not working

[Iwo Mergler]

Lee Garrett wrote:
> Iwo Mergler wrote:
>> There is an old bug workaround which will garble beacons. Today's rt2x00 git
>> has a fix. Unless your sniffer can also display broken packets, you won't see
>> the beacons.
>>
>> You should see the probe requests, however.
>>
>> Kind regards,
>>
>> Iwo
>>
> 
> Hi Iwo,
> I fetched rt2x00 git (up to "rt2x00: Make rt2x00 LEDS invisible config
> option") and tried again. Same problem, no beacons, doesn't answer to probe
> requests.

I spoke too soon. Coincidently, I am also currently trying to get this to
work, and I'm hitting problems, albeit different ones.

> But only the moment I start hostapd (I do cap more APs and STAs, but cut them
> out for privacy). So I see exactly one (broken beacon?) frame when starting
> hostapd, but no further frames. When I start airodump-ng *after*  hostapd, I
> don't see this.

I see hostapd trying to send a frame on an interface for which the initialisation
call in rt2x00 never happened. In my case, the system blows up on an uninitialised
spinlock. On a different system, things appeared to work, I could see beacons. It
may well be that your system is somewhere halfway, functionality-wise ;-)

> 
> I tried something else, too. I manually set all parameters on my client via
> 
> iwconfig ath0 essid testing123 channel 1 ap 00:1f:c6:xx:xx:xx
> 
> I then set IP addresses on both ends and tried to ping, but I didn't work.
> 
> How can I tickle more debug messages out of the rt73usb driver? I tried
> setting debug described in
> "http://rt2x00.serialmonkey.com/wiki/index.php?title=README#Module_options:",
> but rt73usb doesn't accept the debug parameter, and
> /sys/module/rt73usb/parameter/debug doesn't exist. :(

Ivo van Doorn knows everything about the rt2x00 drivers.

> (This does look more like a rt2x00 problem, doesn't it? If yes, we maybe
> should move to the rt2x00 mailing list.)
> 

I'm not sure. As far as I see it, there is a missing initialisation call.
Right now, I would point the finger of blame at mac80211 or maybe hostapd. ;-)
But I'm still trying to understand how everything works. :(

Kind regards,

Iwo