Wi-Fi Hotspot – How to Set Up a Wi-Fi Hotspot with an Ubuntu Laptop

hot-spotwirelesswireless-access-point

I've read this article, and carefully followed the instructions provided. I am sure the wireless card in my laptop supports going into wireless access point mode.
But unfortunately, when I use the following command to start hostapd service it throws an error:

 $ sudo service hostapd stop
 Starting advanced IEEE 802.11 management hostapd                      [fail]

The instructions mentioned above said this could possibly be because my wireless card does not support the g mode, and provided the wiki of hostapd.
But what is g mode? I tried to switch to a, or b mode, but it just didn't work.

Can anyone help with this or recommend a tool like connectify in windows ?

ps. I am using Ubuntu 12.04, 32 bit. I have an ADSL wired network, and I want to share it by setting my laptop into a WiFi hotspot with my windows phone.

Best Answer

You need to create infrastructure (Access Point mode) wireless hot-spot rather Ad-hoc hot-spot. In linux(ubuntu) i used ap-hotspot and which works for me(i got connected WP8 and Android 4.4, dont know about iPhones).

For installation

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:nilarimogard/webupd8
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install ap-hotspot

Update for 14.04

The hostapd version in Ubuntu 14.04 is buggy and doesn't work properly. To get AP-Hotspot to work with hostapd in Ubuntu 14.04, you need to downgrade hostapd and use apt to hold the package so it's not upgraded.

To do this, use the following commands:
For 32 Bit:

cd /tmp
wget http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/w/wpa/hostapd_1.0-3ubuntu2.1_i386.deb
sudo dpkg -i hostapd*.deb
sudo apt-mark hold hostapd

For 64 Bit

cd /tmp
wget http://old-releases.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/pool/universe/w/wpa/hostapd_1.0-3ubuntu2.1_amd64.deb
sudo dpkg -i hostapd*.deb
sudo apt-mark hold hostapd

Configuration

sudo ap-hotspot configure

Configure_Sample

It will asks for interfaces, Access point name(which can be anything you want to see as wifi_hotspot name), password(which is your wifi_hotspot security key).

Now, if you able to configure successfully and dont get any kind of Unsupported wifi errors(if you get that simply means, your wifi_card doesnt support infrastrucutre Access point wifi_hotspot, so can do nothing on it), then procceed.

So just now start your hotspot as

sudo ap-hotspot start

If you want to stop then

sudo ap-hotspot stop

If you wanna see all available commands

sudo ap-hotspot

You don't see this hot-spot running in any indicator or something, i am still finding it how to determine status checking of it.

I am using is from last few weeks, and no bugs(no side-effects too) yet. I am using Gnome-Ubuntu 13.10 amd64 sharing eth0 to my WP8.

SOURCE : http://www.unixmen.com/create-infrastructure-wifi-access-point-connect-android-devices/ SOURCE : http://www.webupd8.org/2013/06/how-to-set-up-wireless-hotspot-access.html

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