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I'm trying to make a DIY wireless repeater using old hardware and Debian, but I'm encountering some difficulties (more details below).
Hardware:
EeePC 900 w/Atheros wireless card (kernel driver ath5k) External wireless card D-Link DWL-0122 (Ralink chip, kernel driver rt73-usb)
Setup:
One wireless AP (auth using WPA-PSK)
Configuration:
/etc/network/interfaces
auto lo br0
iface lo inet loopback
# The primary network interface
# This is unused
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
iface wlan0 inet manual
wpa-ssid myessid
wpa-psk mypass
iface wlan1 inet manual
# To prevent clashes with main AP
pre-up iwconfig wlan1 mode managed essid "repeater" channel 4
iface br0 inet static
address 192.168.10.3
netmask 255.255.255.0
network 192.168.10.0
broadcast 192.168.10.255
gateway 192.168.10.1
dns-nameservers 192.168.10.1
dns-search lan
bridge_hw 00:1f:c6:8f:15:4e # Same HW address as wlan0
bridge_ports wlan0 wlan1
The actual repeating is handled by hostapd. However, the problem is that I cannot reach the network. Once the bridge is up, even before hostapd is started, I cannot reach any internal host, let alone external. All pings to the gateway end up in "Destination Host unreachable". What's the best course of action in this case?
I also ensured that the "main" interface, wlan0, is also working properly when non bridged (gets an IP if configured via DHCP, accesses the network). I'm also forced to use bridging since neither of the two interfaces supports master mode.
brctl show shows both wlan0 and wlan1 in the interfaces. – Einar – 2012-04-29T09:23:26.110
I suppose the reason why brctl doesn't fail is that you're using an old kernel (2.4?) which doesn't yet prohibit such bridging - but it still won't work (it never worked, which is why the kernel developers prohibited the bridging). – Ambroz Bizjak – 2012-04-29T09:26:58.990
It's Debian Squeeze, 2.6.32. – Einar – 2012-04-29T09:29:25.167
@Einar yes, that makes sense, since this bridging was prohibited only in 2.6.33, according to this http://kerneltrap.org/mailarchive/linux-ath5k-devel/2010/3/21/6871553 Again, it won't work, regardless if you manage to put it in the bridge or not.
– Ambroz Bizjak – 2012-04-29T09:50:11.583I can confirm that it does indeed "work" with old kernels--and at least in some configurations. I've been using wireless and wired bridging for years (and am using it right now, as we speak). Not that this invalidates your answer. – Flimzy – 2012-05-01T20:49:14.493