Jessie wifi access point

The 'hostapd' utility is used to manage the access point of the device. This is usually installed by default, but can be installed with:

apt-get update && apt-get install hostapd -y

Note:

The install process may start an unconfigured 'hostapd' process. This process must be killed before moving forward.

Modify the file "/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf" to have the following lines:

ssid=YourWiFiName
wpa_passphrase=Somepassphrase
interface=wlan0
bridge=br0
auth_algs=3
channel=7
driver=nl80211
hw_mode=g
logger_stdout=-1
logger_stdout_level=2
max_num_sta=5
rsn_pairwise=CCMP
wpa=2
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=TKIP CCMP

Note:

Refer to the kernel's hostapd documentation for more wireless configuration options.

The access point can be started and tested by hand:

hostapd /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf

Systemd auto-start with bridge to eth0

It is possible to configure the auto-start of 'hostapd' through systemd. The configuration outlined below will set up a bridge with "eth0", meaning the Wi-Fi connection is directly connected to the ethernet network. The ethernet network is required to have a DHCP server present and active on it to assign Wi-Fi clients an IP address. This setup will allow Wi-Fi clients access to the same network as the ethernet port, and the bridge interface will allow the platform itself to access the network.

Set up hostapd

First, create the file "/etc/systemd/system/hostapd_user.service" with the following contents:

[Unit]
Description=Hostapd IEEE 802.11 AP
Wants=network.target
Before=network.target
Before=network.service
After=sys-subsystem-net-devices-wlan0.device
After=sys-subsystem-net-devices-br0.device
BindsTo=sys-subsystem-net-devices-wlan0.device
BindsTo=sys-subsystem-net-devices-br0.device

[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=/run/hostapd.pid
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/hostapd /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf -P /run/hostapd.pid -B

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then enable this in systemd:

systemctl enable hostapd_user.service
systemctl enable systemd-networkd

Set up bridging

Create the following files with the listed contents.

"/etc/systemd/network/br0.netdev"

[NetDev]
Name=br0
Kind=bridge

"/etc/systemd/network/br0.network"

[Match]
Name=br0

[Network]
DHCP=yes

"/etc/systemd/network/bridge.network"

[Match]
Name=eth0

[Network]
Bridge=br0