Can't get hostap driver to work

[Pavel Roskin]

On Wed, 2008-12-10 at 19:54 -0600, Chuck Martin wrote:
> I asked this a few days ago, but received no response.  Maybe I didn't
> provide enough information.  I don't know what's relevant and what's
> not, so here's what I did, with the results (I usually use a script for
> everything, but I did it manually, so you can see exactly what I did).

It may be helpful if you explain concisely what you want to do rather
than just add more technical information.

Considering that orinoco worked for you, I assume that you are trying to
make the card connect to an AP as a station (because orinoco doesn't
support master mode).

I'm not sure why you are trying to use wpa_supplicant without WPA.

> root at theta:~# modprobe hostap_cs
> root at theta:~# wpa_supplicant -Bddw -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.d/gdl.conf -ieth1 -Dhostap

hostap would not call interface eth1.  It would use names starting with
"wlan".  It's possible that the interface was renamed.  See kernel log
with the "dmesg" command.

> Daemonize..
> root at theta:~# ifconfig
> eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:05:5d:d6:43:20
>           inet6 addr: fe80::205:5dff:fed6:4320/64 Scope:Link
>           UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

Lack of "RUNNING" suggests that wpa_supplicant didn't succeed.  The
output of iwconfig could be useful here.  Maybe the interface is in
master mode?  Then it should be put in managed mode first:

iwconfig eth1 mode managed

> wifi0     Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-05-5D-D6-43-20-6C-6F-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00

The presence of wifi0 with the same MAC address suggests that hostap is
indeed active and that wlan0 was renamed to eth1.

> root at theta:~# dhcpcd -d eth1
> dhcpcd: MAC address = 00:05:5d:d6:43:20

I think it won't work without "RUNNING".

> root at theta:~# pccardctl eject
> root at theta:~# modprobe -r hostap_cs
> root at theta:~# modprobe orinoco_cs
> root at theta:~# pccardctl insert
> root at theta:~# wpa_supplicant -Bddw -c/etc/wpa_supplicant.d/gdl.conf -ieth1 -Dhostap
> Daemonize..

I don't think running wpa_supplicant with "-Dhostap" would work with
orinoco and a WPA-enabled AP.  "-Dhostap" uses hostap-specific API.

> root at theta:~# ifconfig eth1 up
> root at theta:~# ifconfig
> eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:05:5d:d6:43:20
>           inet6 addr: fe80::205:5dff:fed6:4320/64 Scope:Link
>           UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

This time we have "RUNNING".  

> root at theta:~# dhcpcd -d eth1
> dhcpcd: MAC address = 00:05:5d:d6:43:20
> dhcpcd: your IP address = 10.80.51.12

And things work.  Perhaps the driver is completely ignoring
wpa_supplicant because it doesn't understand the hostap API.

> There is no encryption on this system.  Could someone tell me why it
> doesn't work with the hostap driver, but it works with the orinoco
> driver?

Orinoco driver just ignores wpa_supplicant that is using hostap API, but
hostap driver understands the wpa_supplicant commands.  wpa_supplicant
should show some explanation it its logs why it's failing with hostap.

-- 
Regards,
Pavel Roskin