Re: [PATCH 3/3] ath10k: implement mesh support

[Bob Copeland <me@bobcopeland.com>]

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 12:21:35AM -0700, Peter Oh wrote:
> Can we configure mesh point with hostapd or can we use mesh point without
> neither wpa_supplicant nor hostapd?
> Currently I'm trying to bring up mesh point, but whenever I run hostpad
> after creating mesh point (iw phy0 interface add mesh type mp), hostapd
> change the interface mode to managed.

Hostapd can't control the mesh interface, but wpa_supplicant can,
though I believe there's a little more work needed to support VHT for
mesh in wpa_supplicant.  If you want to run an unencrypted mesh, you can
start it with iw and the kernel will run the peering manager.

If you're asking about a mesh-enabled access point, you can run hostapd
separately from wpa_supplicant/iw, as in the below script.

(I've only tested that you can bring this up on ath10k, not actual
operation, though it should work as far as I know.  I've run similar
scripts on ath9k.)

#!/bin/bash -x
#
# Example of running a mesh-enabled access point with one radio.
#
killall hostapd > /dev/null
killall wpa_supplicant > /dev/null

pubip=`ip route get 8.8.8.8 | awk 'NR==1 {print $NF}'`
last8=`echo $pubip | awk -F . '{print $4}'`
meship=10.10.1.$last8
iface=wlan0
ap_iface=ap0
br_iface=br0
mesh_mac=42:00:00:00:00:`printf "%.2x" $last8`
channel=36
freq=5180

brctl delbr $br_iface
brctl addbr $br_iface

# add a new interface for ap operation
iw dev $ap_iface del
iw dev $iface interface add $ap_iface type managed
ip addr flush $ap_iface
ip link set $ap_iface down

# create hostapd conf for ath10k
cat <<__EOM > hostapd.conf
interface=$ap_iface
driver=nl80211
ssid=mesh-ap
hw_mode=a
channel=$channel
auth_algs=3
own_ip_addr=$meship
wpa=1
wpa_passphrase=my_password
wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
wpa_pairwise=CCMP
ht_capab=[HT40+]
ieee80211n=1
ieee80211ac=1
vht_oper_chwidth=1
vht_oper_centr_freq_seg0_idx=$((channel + 6))
bridge=$br_iface
__EOM

# configure main interface to run in mesh mode
ip addr flush $iface
ip link set $iface down
ip link set addr $mesh_mac dev $iface
iw dev $iface set type mp
ip link set $iface up

# start the mesh
# here you might instead run wpa_supplicant for an encrypted mesh
iw dev $iface set freq $freq 80 $((freq + 30))
iw dev $iface mesh join mesh-vht

sleep 5

# add mesh to bridge (hostapd adds AP interface to bridge)
brctl addif $br_iface $iface
ip addr add $meship/24 dev $br_iface
ip link set $br_iface up

# run hostapd
hostapd -dd hostapd.conf >hostapd.log 2>&1 &

-- 
Bob Copeland %% http://bobcopeland.com/