How to setup a wireless access point

This material is work-in-progress ... Do not follow instructions here until this notice is removed. (Last edited by Ncopa on 22 Aug 2012.)

Install needed packages

apk add hostapd wireless-tools wpa_supplicant

Check that card is detected

Cat /proc/net/dev and see which cards are detected. If no cards are available, check what driver the card uses and modprobe it. Check that the card is in master mode.

Setup Bridge

Please see Bridge for how to set up network bridges.

Setup Encryption

Edit /etc/hostapd/hostapd.wpa_psk and insert the following, replacing PASSPHRASE with the WPA_PSK key you would like to use (remove keys that you don't want to use):

00:00:00:00:00:00 PASSPHRASE

Setup hostapd

Edit /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf and replace entries that need to be such as interface, bridge, driver, ssid, etc. Example file below:

interface=wlan0
bridge=br0
driver=hostap
logger_syslog=-1
logger_syslog_level=2
logger_stdout=-1
logger_stdout_level=2
debug=0
dump_file=/tmp/hostapd.dump
ctrl_interface=/var/run/hostapd
ctrl_interface_group=0
ssid=SecureSSID
#macaddr_acl=1
#accept_mac_file=/etc/hostapd/accept
auth_algs=3
eapol_key_index_workaround=0
eap_server=0
wpa=3
wpa_psk_file=/etc/hostapd/hostapd.wpa_psk
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=CCMP

If you wish to use MAC address filtering, uncomment the lines starting with macaddr_acl and accept_mac_file, create /etc/hostapd/accept (with 600 permissions) and add the allowed clients' MAC address to the file.

Start hostapd.

/etc/init.d/hostapd start

Associate clients

Associate a few different clients to test.