Hostapd de-auth connected clients

[Jouni Malinen]

On Tue, Feb 28, 2017 at 04:06:48PM +0530, ravin goyal wrote:
> I am sharing link to recent debug log related to de-auth messages in
> hostapd, I hope it might help to figure out what's really happening
> and to know whether it is due to driver or hostapd.
> 
> Please take a look at this.
> 
> link to log file: https://clbin.com/0flGD

It looks like number of the disconnections in the two logs are triggered
by station inactivity check:

1488275056.529235: wlan0: Station 00:73:8d:43:87:2e has been inactive too long: 308 sec, max allowed: 300
1488275056.529389:   Polling STA
1488275056.529457: nl80211: send_mlme - da= 00:73:8d:43:87:2e noack=0 freq=0 no_cck=0 offchanok=0 wait_time=0 fc=0x248 (WLAN_FC_STYPE_NULLFUNC) nlmode=3
1488275056.529574: nl80211: Use bss->freq=2442
1488275056.529634: nl80211: CMD_FRAME freq=2442 wait=0 no_cck=0 no_ack=0 offchanok=0
1488275056.529711: CMD_FRAME - hexdump(len=24): 48 02 00 00 00 73 8d 43 87 2e 02 1a 11 f5 47 06 02 1a 11 f5 47 06 00 00
1488275056.530129: nl80211: Frame command failed: ret=-22 (Invalid argument) (freq=2442 wait=0)
1488275056.530231: nl80211_send_null_frame: Failed to send poll frame
1488275056.530295: ap_handle_timer: register ap_handle_timer timeout for 00:73:8d:43:87:2e (1 seconds - AP_DISASSOC_DELAY)


This code should not have been triggered at all if the driver reported
activity in the expected way, so I'm assuming the driver does not
support that.. And then it does not support sending out the poll frame
to check whether the STA is still there.

You might be able to work around this by setting a significantly larger
ap_max_inactivity value in hostapd.conf, but for a proper fix, someone
more familiar with the particular driver would need to take a look at
what's happening and why the driver does not indicate station activity.

-- 
Jouni Malinen                                            PGP id EFC895FA