Disconnected clients from a running hostapd on a bridged interface

[Simon Morgenthaler]

On Wednesday 05 October 2011 20:32:25 Jouni Malinen wrote:
> On Wed, Oct 05, 2011 at 03:55:22PM +0200, Simon Morgenthaler wrote:
> > The output (with hostapd -d) after a connection and disconnection with
> > the android smartphone looks like that:
> >
> > association request: STA=38:e7:d8:xx:xx:xx capab_info=0x421
> > listen_interval=10 new AID 1
> > wlan0: STA 38:e7:d8:xx:xx:xx IEEE 802.11: association OK (aid 1)
> > mgmt::assoc_resp cb
> > wlan0: STA 38:e7:d8:xx:xx:xx IEEE 802.11: associated (aid 1)
> > wlan0: AP-STA-CONNECTED 38:e7:d8:xx:xx:xx
> > wlan0: STA 38:e7:d8:xx:xx:xx MLME: MLME-
> > ASSOCIATE.indication(38:e7:d8:xx:xx:xx)
> > wlan0: STA 38:e7:d8:xx:xx:xx MLME:
> > MLME-DELETEKEYS.request(38:e7:d8:xx:xx:xx) wlan0: STA 38:e7:d8:xx:xx:xx
> > RADIUS: starting accounting session 000034EE-00000000
> > IEEE 802.1X: Ignore STA - 802.1X not enabled or forced for WPS
> > nl80211: Event message available
> > nl80211: New station 38:e7:d8:xx:xx:xx
> >
> > mgmt::disassoc
> > disassocation: STA=38:e7:d8:xx:xx:xx reason_code=8
> > wlan0: AP-STA-DISCONNECTED 38:e7:d8:xx:xx:xx
> 
> It looks like the station decided to disconnect (reason code 8 is
> "Disassociated because sending STA is leaving BSS") for some reason.
> Consequently, there is not really much you could see from hostapd debug
> log and the real information would be on the station.. The best option
> would be to debug the station, but if that is not feasible with the
> specific devices that show this issue, the next best option would be to
> take a look at a wireless sniffer log showing all the frames exchanged
> between the station and the AP. Since the station seems to be leaving in
> 5-60 seconds, my first guess would be that some operation like DHCP
> times out and makes the station leave the network.
> 

Thanks for the answer.
I'm trying to debug and sniff the issue, but didn't find anything helpful until 
now.
DHCP is not involved. There is no dhcp server runnting on the mesh node and 
all network configuration is done manually (fix ips, etc...).
A short test with a running dhcp server didn't solve the issue. Using a WPA 
authentication key worked neither...
I wonder why it works without the bridge? What could cause the issues when a 
bridge is involved? Do you think it is an issue with hostapd or maybe some 
other component like kernel/-configuration, ath5k, mac80211, ... ?
Or is there something special how the interfaces and bridge needs to be 
configured?