Wifi bridge (kernel 6.11 breaks linux-wifi-hotspot wireless bridge)

Support AUR
1

So far I’ve been using linux-wifi-hotspot from AUR (wihotspot in terminal) to bridge my existing wireless connection and open a hotspot (eg temporary Guest Network, so I don’t have to share the long password of my home setup). This works in kernel 6.6.65-1-MANJARO, but in kernel 6.11.11-1-MANJARO I can only share a wired connection, not the wireless anymore.

I have searched a few things but now I need help to proceed further.
Upstream issue #435 links to kernel issue 219394 stating one should use p2p_group_add.

I see two possibilities:

  1. kernel change gets reverted upstream or manjaro ships a patch
  2. use wifi-p2p

As recommended by the kernel dev, I tried to use wifi-p2p ( = WIFI Direct) but failed. There’s no gui for linux and it isn’t implemented by linux-wifi-hotspot. I am trying to connect my android phone to my manjaro machine. The phone is able to connect to another android phone via Wifi Direct (well hidden in wifi settings). Both laptop and phone see each other, but I can’t get a connection.

Try 2.1:

sudo dnsmasq
nmcli con add type wifi-p2p peer mac:of:my:phone autoconnect no ipv4.addresses 192.168.42.1/24 ipv4.method manual
# doesn't work

Try 2.2:
loosely following https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31877144/how-to-set-up-a-wifi-direct-connection-between-android-and-linux and P2P howto — Linux Wireless documentation

sudo dnsmasq
sudo wpa_cli -i wlp3s0 terminate -B
sudo wpa_cli -i wlp3s0 p2p_group_add
sudo ip addr add 192.168.12.1/24 dev p2p-wlp3s0-0
sudo wpa_cli
> p2p_find
> p2p_peers   
# returns mac:of:my:phone
> p2p_connect mac:of:my:phone pbc
# returns `OK` but doesnt work
> p2p_connect mac:of:my:phone 0000
# doesnt work
> wps_pbc
# doesnt work

If someone knows what I could do differently or is doing something upstream, I’m happy to hear!

PS: Suppose I manage to get a p2p connection, how do I share my existing network?

2

Why not simply create a second (guest) network on your router?
No need to bridge anything then …
Most modern devices do support the creation of such a second WiFi interface, some even have it enabled by default.

1 Like
3

That’s what I do. And I can set it to automatically top existing at a certain time, so I set it to stop automagically.

4

Thanks for the answers. Sadly I don’t have access to the routers in all of the places where I want to sync my phone and laptop.

5

But you don’t need a bridged WiFi to do that …

… yes, I’m avoiding to engage with your problem description - I simply see no need for it and also a lack of information to do so.

I won’t be engaging with that in any case, btw.
It’s nothing personal - just likely a lot of time will be spent to clarify and request missing information,
when there is no real need to do it the way you apparently did and which stopped working for some reason.

… sync works without … hotspot

6

Another usecase now broken is to have my laptop as a wifi repeater

7

It would need a second network interface where the old kernel or windows don’t.

8

Linux 6.11 is EOL and you should change to 6.12 before the next stable sync

sudo mhwd-kernel -i linux612
2 Likes
9

Thanks. Yes I did that already. Sadly my issue didn’t get fixed.

10

and that one is still a current and supported kernel - I’m using it right now

uname -r
6.6.65-1-MANJARO

Why not keep using it?

Besides that we know nothing about the hardware involved or whether you have rebuilt it after an update or not.
It’s an AUR package and you may have used other AUR dependencies to build it.
It can be built with just repo packages - but we don’t know how you did it.

AUR (en) - linux-wifi-hotspot

11

My reason for this thread is to raise awareness to this change in the kernel where it diverts from the “norm”: on android, windows and, i believe, apple the usual way to share your internet connection is to open a hotspot and wifi-p2p is a hidden and feature-restricted option. Now the kernel blocks this feature for a reason i don’t know and can only guess purism. That’s valid even if it’s sad for me. So for the future I hope that either the kernel change gets reverted or there will be better support for wifi-p2p. If neither happens i probably have to buy a usb-wifi-adapter and carry it with me.

@Nachlese thank you for your reply and i hope you now understand what my intentions are. Staying on linux66 is a valid but temporary solution. My wifi card is (from lspci -v) Intel Corporation Wireless 3160 (rev 83) with kernel module iwlwifi, but i don’t think other working wifi cards behave differently (happy to know more). I got the package via pamac build linux-wifi-hotspot (to be honest, i did it in the gui).

12

Just for the experiment I tested the app.

Suffice the necessary dependencies are synced - it works as expected.

I banged a wall at first - but then I realized my firewall would block - when I disabled firewall - I couls connect my phone the default hotspot.

My system is on unstable branch (custom scripts often require arch package level)

 $ inxi -Sxxxc0
System:
  Host: fox13 Kernel: 6.12.10-1-MANJARO arch: x86_64 bits: 64
    compiler: gcc v: 14.2.1 clocksource: tsc
  Desktop: KDE Plasma v: 6.2.5 tk: Qt v: N/A wm: kwin_wayland
    vt: 1 dm: SDDM Distro: Manjaro base: Arch Linux


 $ pacman-mirrors --get-branch
unstable

dnsmasq is a required dependency
apparmor is a required dependency

See → AppArmor - ArchWiki

For apparmor to work correct you need adding to kernel cmdline.

lsm=landlock,lockdown,yama,integrity,apparmor,bpf

rebuild init and reboot

sudo mkinitcpio -P
13

I mean no offense with this(!):
Is that something you know to be true or was that just a guess?

I do not know how it works in Windows (you said something about needing vs not needing two interfaces …)

From my experience with playing with and using cheap WiFi routers which can be flashed with OpenWRT and which I used to do similar things with

(to extend a Hotel WiFi signal, or to take that one available connection and make it available to multiple devices under a new network name … travel-mate is the name of the package that makes this easy - but only made for use in OpenWRT)

it always, internally, involves either having two physical interfaces (two cards)
or one card on which two or more virtual interfaces can be created.

I would not have thought that this is dependent on the kernel - but rather on the capabilities of the card.
And on firewall settings as well.

Hence my question whether you know that this is due to a change in the kernel.

The linux66 kernel (where it works) is a LTS kernel - so continuing to use it for a long time to come is possible.

That still does not ensure that some of the dependencies are not also from AUR - go look at that page I linked to to see what I mean.

With each kernel change
or even after each other update of the base system
you may need to rebuild at least this one package -
especially if it suddenly stops doing what it has always been doing …
Make sure you did that …

and:
the AUR packages expect the package versions which ARCH uses - Manjaro, especially the “stable” branch of it - often has got different, slightly older versions
which may also be a reason for it not working :man_shrugging:

It is?
I didn’t see it.

AUR (en) - linux-wifi-hotspot

14

Thank you for the info on AppArmor! (I don’t use any of AppArmors functions so far) Yes i think this is a very nice app, but with the kernel change it lost it’s unique selling point over the kde hotspot, which is also able to open a hotspot, but not a wireless bridge.

15

Thanks for the info, maybe i have look into a little openwrt device, could be fun. Please read my first message, this is not a problem of the install of linux-wifi-hotspot, but a communicated change in the kernel.

16

They (the kernel people) won’t fix it
because the functionality is still there, just by doing it another way

It seems the program itself would need to be changed/adapted to be able to use that different method to achieve the same goal.

17

* It’s there, it works. There’s nothing to fix. It’s just different.

You could always just use kernel 6.6 if this is so important to you.

18

… that’s what I “said” - what I wanted to convey …

and, of course I’d keep using the linux66 LTS kernel - but it wasn’t me who had issues with the thing :slightly_smiling_face:

19

I know :wink:
I understand.
I get it.
I still recommend 6.6 to @OP anyway :wink:

20

Agreed with all of you. Which is were I was at the beginning and I’m sorry to be so fixed on this: If the feature is there, @Nachlese and @Mirdarthos, can you get wifi-p2p working? Because that’s my argument, that the feature isn’t there.