Puppy as a wifi access point - OLD !!

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Atle
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A possibility to create a standalone AP for local net?

#16 Post by Atle »

Dear Puppy users.

This idea is not about sharing the internet. Its about sharing content, music, video and even broadcast your little very local "TV Station", using your webcam and whatever you can make on your own.

This requires a preset "AP Puppy" that covers as much Wlan hardware as possible by default. Most people can not configure this HostAPD, so its a dead end to try to explain and all this. I am on their mailinglist and have given it up, as its to complicated.

So the idea is to give as much Puppy possible stuff, like gameserver, websserver that can have chat, videochat and whatever you can build around the LAMP and lets say Joomla? I can say for the joomla part its so many possibilities here.

Waht i do not know is if one can build a Puppy, based on the lastest, like the one around the corner, that does this out of the box? So when I go out, I can put on this and people around can for free download, upload or do whatever?

Thanks for any answer.

Is that possible

tempestuous
Posts: 5464
Joined: Fri 10 Jun 2005, 05:12
Location: Australia

#17 Post by tempestuous »

Atle, you're asking two separate questions;

Q1) whether a Puppy (or dotpet package) can be provided with various filesharing, media streaming-server & chat utilities pre-configured.
The answer is almost certainly yes, but this is a distinctly different subject to this forum thread. Please make your own new forum thread (with a relevant thread title) which is correct forum practice and forum etiquette.

Q2) whether a Puppy (or dotpet package) can be provided with wifi access point configuration pre-configured.
The answer is definitely NO !!
You need to understand that Puppy is an operating system, and is subject to the vagaries of different hardware that individual users might choose to run it on. There's absolutely no way that a particular hardware function can be guaranteed to work, and certainly not with a complex application such as a wifi access point daemon.
As I explained in the first post, hostapd was originally designed to work with only a limited range of wifi drivers (and the corresponding devices): hostap_pci, hostap_cs, and ath_pci (MADWiFi). And this limited range of support remains the case in Puppy 5.1/5.2 at this stage, until the kernel is ugraded and the wifi subsystem moves up to the new "nl80211" architecture.

What you're asking for could be achieved if it was within the confines of a hardware-specific device ... that's why Netgear and Linksys, for example sell you a wifi router device - they don't sell you the embedded Linux operating system to set up, yourself.

Of course, if you really wanted to set up a hardware-specific device (running Puppy) in the manner that you describe, sure, you can do it - just make sure that you use a wifi adapter which uses one of the 3 drivers I listed as compatible.

Atle wrote:Most people can not configure this HostAPD
Well ... yes ... maybe. Like many things in Linux, it requires effort, and the question then becomes is the user prepared to step up to the challenge?
But to be clear, hostapd does definitely work in Puppy 5.1/5.2, it's been confirmed via private message to me ...
but naturally, it will only work with one of the 3 compatible wifi drivers ... and it seems that newbies have great trouble understanding this critical point.

Atle
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A mulitiple ISO?

#18 Post by Atle »

Ok. Could it be possible to create 3 different preset configurations, covering those 3 drivers?

As an example. Let say I make a remaster of 5.2.6, and it has a web server running and all is fine. I make sure the ISO is no larger than 225MB(3x225=675MB). The idea is to make a multiple ISO CD, whereas, the 3 different HostAPD, drivers are working out of the box. The CD serves no other purpose than that.

Is it possible?

Thanks for your reply that was fast and informative.

Atle

tempestuous
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Joined: Fri 10 Jun 2005, 05:12
Location: Australia

#19 Post by tempestuous »

Atle wrote:Could it be possible to create 3 different preset configurations, covering those 3 drivers?
Sure, but the difference in configuration between hostap_cs/hostap_pci setup versus ath_pci setup is quite trivial. I hardly think it's worth the effort to make 3 separate packages.

I'm reading between the lines, but I think what you're really wanting is some form of simplified initialisation to launch the computer into wifi Access-Point mode?

Experienced Linux/Puppy-Linux users should realise that the manual commands I explained are intended to be used in the initial "testing" stage with their particular hardware. But once these commands are tested and confirmed to work, it's quite straightforward to create a script which will run all of the necessary commands from a single mouse-click.

I could go ahead and create this script, myself, and include it in the hostapd package ... but there are two reasons why I didn't do this in the first place:

i) I don't have the relevant wifi hardware, myself, and it's somewhat "bold" to provide a setup script which I only know to be correct in theory.
But now you have raised this point, my curiosity is piqued, and I think I will buy an Atheros-based wifi card on eBay so I can test hostapd, myself. You will need to wait for about a week for my results.

ii) anyone who doesn't know how to run the manual commands, then create a suitable script, themselves, is quite inexperienced in the Linux world, and the somewhat advanced technical setup that you outlined is going to be difficult to achieve for such a person, regardless of whether I provide automated wifi AP setup.

aarf

Re: A possibility to create a standalone AP for local net?

#20 Post by aarf »

Atle wrote:Dear Puppy users.

This idea is not about sharing the internet. Its about sharing content, music, video and even broadcast your little very local "TV Station", using your webcam and whatever you can make on your own.
this was also my idea in addition to supplying a wifi access point. was hoping that the in-built haiwatha server or an installed Xampp would be able to get the stuff out onto the wifi hotspot. wasnt thinking tv station but website and in distant future possibly robotic application..
havent progressed or tried further since last visit to this thread.

aarf

#21 Post by aarf »

android and mac are leaving us in the shade. i dont like it.
Image
The flier connects to your iPhone and iPod touch through Wi-Fi and is controlled by either tilting the remote or using on-screen buttons
reference http://www.bangkokpost.com/tech/gadget/ ... it-a-plane
wonder about the wifi card and drivers too.
The range is claimed to be about 50m
they havent got N wifi then :o

Atle
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#22 Post by Atle »

Thanks for the good answers.

This could be done in a few steps and I believe we are not alone on this wish as there is a large group of mailing list users for HostAP.

So to put it into steps.

1) Unite on some goals(multiboot cd, webserver, joomla, webcam support etc)

2) Create one version that supports some of the ideas implemented from 1, and I will upload the file and create a little "community" dedicated for this purpose

3) Promote the project towards the HostAP mailingslist and see if we can attract some people with common interest and also knowhow specific to HostAP

4) Enjoy whatever comes out of this :)

What I can offer is to work on the Joomla and Hiawatha/ SQL/PHP thing. Thats as far as I go. I have done that one before with 5.2.5, and I believe I shall be able to do that also with 5.2.6, that i believe is around the corner.

I can also offer hosting for the files and make some sort of common workspace for kicking off the project.

Yet I believe that the AP-Puppy or whatever it could be named, will depend on a variety of ideas, like as in social.

As for social its like chatting with your neighbors, offer multiplayer gaming for friends, sharing files, getting files, videochat if that is possible. SEnd your own local news at 2100 every day if that is possible. Only fantasy and the existing possibilities trough the existing repo decides that?

I guess the keyword there is servers? Gameservers, webserver etc?

tempestuous
Posts: 5464
Joined: Fri 10 Jun 2005, 05:12
Location: Australia

#23 Post by tempestuous »

After 2 months and 100 downloads, forum users' reports on this subject have been vague. So I decided to test this application, myself.
I bought a MADWiFi-compatible wifi PCI card on eBay; Netgear WG311T, and then tried the setup commands, with one difference: my client wifi device is not WPA compatible, so I set the hostapd configuration for no encryption ("wpa=0").
The hostapd commands all appeared to work, except that the final message looked a little worrying:
"l2_packet_receive - recvfrom: Network is down"

But pressing on, I plugged my old B-mode wifi dongle (D-Link DWL-122) into my Windows computer, and bam! It connected to the Puppy access point.
Attached is the screen grab of the D-Link wifi connection utility in Windows, showing my successful connection.

Of course this is only with WPA encryption disabled. I will need to beg/borrow/steal a WPA compatible client device before I can confirm that hostapd works with WPA/WPA2 encryption.
But the access point functionality is definitely working, and so is the network bridging.

I discovered a few things along the way, particularly regarding DHCP and network configuration, and I have updated the instructions in the first post.
Also I have now repackaged the hostapd dotpet to include a launch-script to make it easier for users who are daunted by all the manual commands involved.
Attachments
D-Link-utility.jpg
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tempestuous
Posts: 5464
Joined: Fri 10 Jun 2005, 05:12
Location: Australia

#24 Post by tempestuous »

Router/server/network considerations

Once configured as explained in the first post, your Puppy computer is now a wifi access point, but it's not a router.

You need to be aware that the network configuration is reliant upon the external modem or router that's connected to the ethernet port of the Puppy computer.
The modem/router will, for example, typically assign Puppy's "br0" interface an IP address of 192.168.0.2.
Then when a wifi client connects to Puppy, it's effectively looking through Puppy to the modem/router, which will most likely assign it an IP address of 192.168.0.3.

Now if you want Puppy to act as a server, that's OK, the client can access Puppy at 192.168.0.2, but Puppy is a network peer, not a network server. Puppy is dependent upon the external router for its IP address, and the various services that you run on Puppy will need to be configured for this IP address ... and the IP address can obviously change.

If you want to run server applications on your Puppy wifi access point, it would be optimal if Puppy was configured as a full network server, and the good news is that this is certainly possible. In this scenario, Puppy takes an external IP address from the modem on its ethernet interface as before, but Puppy also has its own LAN, with a different range of IP addresses, starting, for example, from 10.0.0.1.
Now Puppy's internal IP address is fixed, and the wifi clients can always access Puppy at the same address.

The bad news is that I don't know how to set this up.
I know that some of our forum regulars are experts in networking, and they would need to weigh in with the right information.

Atle
Posts: 596
Joined: Wed 19 Nov 2008, 12:38
Location: Oslo, Norway
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#25 Post by Atle »

Cool...

In the suggested little project by me, the encryption is not really wanted as all are welcome to use it.

Let give it a little time, until the new 5.2.6 or is it 5.2.7 comes and I shall try to get a Joomla up and running there with some cool things like chat and files up and down etc. I will try to make a Joomla Puppy as the very first thing as its released and it seems to be pretty soon

This is great news.

atle :D

aarf

#26 Post by aarf »

pleased that you have this running tempestuous and also pleased that you finally named a compatible device: Netgear WG311T to plug into non- compatible computers..
now there should be no roadblocks.
erm.. where is the gui or new pets?

<edited to reflect further correct info.>
Last edited by aarf on Tue 09 Aug 2011, 15:09, edited 3 times in total.

Atle
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#27 Post by Atle »

But pressing on, I plugged my old B-mode wifi dongle (D-Link DWL-122) into my Windows computer, and bam! It connected to the Puppy access point.
Attached is the screen grab of the D-Link wifi connection utility in Windows, showing my successful connection.
You got to be kidding :shock: Its the same dongle that I have :D

So that means I am SUPPORTED...

That is so cool. :lol:

tempestuous
Posts: 5464
Joined: Fri 10 Jun 2005, 05:12
Location: Australia

#28 Post by tempestuous »

aarf wrote:also pleased that you finally named a compatible dongle.
Atle wrote:Its the same dongle that I have
So that means I am SUPPORTED...
Careful guys, you seem to be getting confused - the USB dongle I mentioned was on my client computer. The client computer can be any operating system, with any wifi device which is capable of operating in B-mode or G-mode.

Regarding compatible wifi devices for the Puppy access point - I explained this in the very first paragraph of the first post in this thread. Generally, MADWiFi-compatible devices (Atheros AR521x wifi chip) are the main option.
Yes, I did name the compatible wifi device that I used on the Puppy access point computer - Netgear WG311T - that's a PCI card, not a USB dongle.

For a comprehensive listing of MADWiFi-compatible devices, see here -
http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_chip ... et=Atheros
What's not mentioned on that list are the internal miniPCI MADWiFi devices found in the older range of netbooks, especially the older ASUS Eee's.

aarf

#29 Post by aarf »

hmm i see same name for new pets as original hostapd-0.7.3.pet so have to redowload the same named pet,
testing not me for now, concentration is exhausted so am taking a little time off from testing .

Atle
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Joined: Wed 19 Nov 2008, 12:38
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#30 Post by Atle »

I talked about making a Puppy that has Joomla preinstalled. Once this goes on "air", I think a lot of funny things can become reality. Then I might be wrong;-)

http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewtopic.php?t=71614

aarf

#31 Post by aarf »

ok tempestuous now we have to make it so that some thing like this free app can be used on the wifi
http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-dro ... or-android
here is the plane that it flys
http://shop.singahobby.com/?q=node/26668

for now just something that responds via wifi from puppy is the goal not necessarily a flying thing, some thing simple like an off /on switch on an appliance would be an achievement.
Last edited by aarf on Sat 17 Sep 2011, 23:42, edited 3 times in total.

aarf

#32 Post by aarf »

i think this wifi interaction capability is kernel dependent. which kernels i don't know.
i think just need something like this
http://shop.singahobby.com/?q=node/27183
and this http://shop.singahobby.com/?q=node/27530 to start playing. (plus a lot of knowledge which can be acquired for free.)

tempestuous
Posts: 5464
Joined: Fri 10 Jun 2005, 05:12
Location: Australia

#33 Post by tempestuous »

aarf wrote:ok tempestuous now we have to make it so that some thing like this free app can be used on the wifi
http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-dro ... or-android
That's interesting, but it bears no relevance to wifi hotspots.

aarf wrote:i think this wifi interaction capability is kernel dependent.
Well "interaction" can mean many things. In terms of communication method, that's easy; it's ad-hoc wifi, as explained here -
http://ardrone.parrot.com/parrot-ar-dro ... ns-answers
And ad-hoc wifi is quite easy in Linux, howto here -
http://www.murga-linux.com/puppy/viewto ... 929#159929

But in terms of porting the AR.FreeFlight application to Linux, wow, that would take some effort, especially in terms of reading all the motion and camera data, then displaying it on the Linux X server.

Atle
Posts: 596
Joined: Wed 19 Nov 2008, 12:38
Location: Oslo, Norway
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#34 Post by Atle »

What about just keeping a focus on how people can communicate in case the internet is shit down by our great leaders?

This is a aspect no one really discuss here.

So I am back to my Joomla stuff again. If internet is shut down. Can one somehow use such a technology as discussed here to build local Wifi net in cities etc?

Any views on this?

The thing is... If this Hostap was integrated so that a maximum number of cards and technologies was covered(maybe a multiboot CD with the 3 linux Wifi drivers represented) and it was set up as a system where you SPREAD the technology, so that people can log on to your APs server and download Puppy with the HostAP, so that they can "extend" the range of the network? In such a Puppy the Joomla(or any other technology) could have a lot of "howto's) on WifFi antennas and tricks to extend the range of your Wifi etc.

Call it "WarPup" or whatever:-)

aarf

#35 Post by aarf »

went to play with some prospective android phones today and discovered that touch phones are only for the fingernail challenged. :cry: i don't know if i can do without that fashion statement. it will be a traumatic decision.

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