Ubuntu – Failed to set interface wlan0 into AP mode: Intel centrino N1000 Wireless

hostapdintel-wirelesswireless

I am a new Ubuntu user and have installed Ubuntu 12.04 LTS on my Acer Aspire One D255 netbook with an Intel Centrino N1000 Wireless Card. All I want is to set my netbook as wifi hotspot for my android devices. This worked well for me in Windows 7 using Connectify but I am trying to make hotspot in Ubuntu using hostapd (http://nims11.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/hostapd-the-linux-way-to-create-virtual-wifi-access-point/comment-page-5/) but getting following error:

ali@ali-AOD255:~$ sudo hostapd ~/hostapd-test.conf
Configuration file: /home/ali/hostapd-test.conf
nl80211: Failed to set interface wlan0 into AP mode
nl80211 driver initialization failed.
ELOOP: remaining socket: sock=4 eloop_data=0x8178910 user_data=0x8178e80  handler=0x807c5e0
ELOOP: remaining socket: sock=6 eloop_data=0x817ac98 user_data=(nil) handler=0x8086770

All I want is to setup a wifi hotspot using my netbook so that my android devices can view and connect to it.

Best Answer

To use your network card as wifi hotspot, it must support AP mode & master mode.

To check master-mode run:

sudo iwconfig wlan0 mode master.

If you dont get a error then it supports master-mode

To check AP run following command:

sudo apt-get install iw

Then run:

iw list

If there is 'AP' in the list of "Supported interface modes" your device will support the Access Point mode with hostapd.

But as you commented above, that it doesn't support AP mode, The wifi hotspot wont work as explained in the blog.

Unlike windows, linux-kernel doesn't provide same features for every wireless cards.So for a particular wifi-card, windows driver may support AP , but linux-driver may not.

One option is to purchase a wireless card which supports AP modes. You can find more information here:

http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers

Although according to me, the best option is to buy a USB Wifi-Router with 3G/Evdo modem support(preferably) like Lava W200 .

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