Ubuntu – Create a wifi hotspot using the desktop

Simple steps: Create wifi hotspot in ubuntu

1. Disable Wifi (Uncheck Enable Wi-Fi)
2. Go to network connection (Edit Connections...)
3. Click "Add"
4. Choose "Wi-Fi" and click "Create"
5. Type in Connection name like "wifi-hotspot"
6. Type in SSID as you wish
7. Choose Device MAC Address from the dropdown (wlan0)
8. Wifi Security select "WPA & WPA2 Personal" and set a password.
9. Go to IPv4 Settings tab, from Method drop-down box select Shared to other computers.
10. Then save and close.

11. Open Terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and type in the following command with your connection name used in step 5.

    sudo gedit /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/wifi-hotspot
    

12. Find mode=infrastructure and change it to mode=ap

13. Now check the network section where wi-fi will be connected to the created hotspot automatically. If you can not find it, go to Connect to Hidden Network... Find the connection and connect to it.

Source: http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2014/09/3-ways-create-wifi-hotspot-ubuntu/

The ap-hotspot solution is slightly out of date and has the added disadvantages of being complicated and incompatible with socks proxies. A simpler solution is to use ubuntu's built in network-manager to create the hotspot as detailed by http://ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2014/09/3-ways-create-wifi-hotspot-ubuntu/

TCP traffic from the hotspot can be passed through the ssh -D socks proxy using redsocks. With redsocks installed and configured one can use iptables to redirect all traffic from the wifi hotspot to redsocks which then passes it through the socks proxy.

For instance if your wifi hotspot is on the 10.42.0.1/24 subnet and the incoming redsocks port is 12345 issue:

sudo iptables -F
sudo iptables -t nat -F
sudo iptables -t nat -A PREROUTING -s 10.42.0.0/24 -p tcp -j REDIRECT --to-ports 12345

For a detailed set of instructions visit http://abidmujtaba.blogspot.com/2016/07/ubuntu-create-wifi-hotspot-access-point.html