Re: [gentoo-user] WiFi access point with iwl3945

[Stroller <stroller@stellar.eclipse.co.uk>]

On 7 Nov 2009, at 05:21, Mike Mazur wrote:
> ...
> I'm trying to set up my laptop to be a wireless access point. It has
> an iwl3945 card. I followed the "Atheros Ath5k Wireless Access Point"
> article on gentoo-wiki.com[1] before realizing that it was Atheros
> specific.

Gentoo-wiki is a mess. :(

If only the people who wrote their separate articles about building  
APs with madwifi [1] and ath5k [2] had thought to improve and  
contribute to the pre-existing "wireless access point" article:

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Wireless/Access_point

That explains very clearly (as has Florian) that the hardware needs to  
support "master mode" and also why. The explanation of setting up the  
iptables / bridging / dhcpd / &c should not need to be repeated on  
multiple pages.

I started that page originally, but this was perhaps as much as 5  
years ago. At that time it documented how to produce a basic  
installation with simple explanations in order to make it "easy" for  
someone who was even just a little command-line literate. It has  
actually changed remarkably little in some respects, but I doubt it is  
any longer consistent or fully accurate. It actually claims that the  
ipw3945 does do master mode - I assume this is a different driver for  
your card? - but Googling leaves me dubious; I see the claim repeated  
other places without the poster actually appearing to succeed.

Stroller.





[1] http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Madwifi_Wireless_Access_Point
[2] http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Atheros_Ath5k_Wireless_Access_Point