Hi Mikhail,

...and welcome to the ClearOS forums.

Very interesting article you linked.

Clearcenter is (going??) selling accesspoints (Hybrid Access Devices. I never tried one but they look really interesting and I'm eager to test one.

There is some documentation in the resources section. I never tried this so I have no experience on this matter.

I removed the link I made to the Clearcenter store. I'm not sure if I allowed to make this public. I can't find a link to this page on the Clearcenter store. So I think I accidentally found it.

They devices Clearcenter is (going) to sell are looking very interesting. I saw amazing network gear HACx, HSx (10GB/s???). Awesome!

I suppose it's no problem. Clearcenter made a announcement on Facebook about these devices.



Enough, I'm hijacking this thread...

Hi Marcel,


Thanks for your response!
I've read this article and as I said earlier I managed to run an access point on my PC but couldn't share my internet connection. Also for me it is still unclear how to assign one LAN port as WAN and another as standard LAN ready for connection of other network devices with access to the internet.

With "IP settings" you can configure you network. Is that what you searching for?

I think I found one solution for my problem. But currently I'm stuck in authentification error. I can run an AP but can't connect to it by any device. Maybe I changed something in hostapd.conf file. Can anyone look at it and tell what is wrong:

#

# For more information, look here:

#

#	http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Documentation/hostapd

#



ctrl_interface=/var/run/hostapd

ctrl_interface_group=wheel



# General settings

# bridge=br0

interface=wlp0s20u7

driver=nl80211

hw_mode=g

channel=6

auth_algs=1

ssid=ClearOS Community

macaddr_acl=0

ignore_broadcast_ssid=0

ieee8021x=0

ctrl_interface=/var/run/hostapd



# Wireless N

# wme_enabled=1

# ieee80211n=1

# ht_capab=[HT40-][SHORT-GI-40][DSSS_CCK-40]



# WPA

wpa=3

wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK

wpa_passphrase=1111111111

wpa_pairwise=TKIP

rsn_pairwise=CCMP

# wpa_group_rekey=300

# wpa_gmk_rekey=640

Does the SSID support spaces?

You often need to use quotes with spaces.

I came across different reports on the internet about SSID and space problems...

I'm 100 percent sure that it worked with the default SSID: "ClearOS Community" with spaces and without the quotation marks after I installed the system. I've been playing with hostapd.conf for a while. I tried to remove spaces in SSID and updated the conf file according to the official documentation without any success.

Also the wifi dongle works only on channels from 5 to 11. Something strange is happening to my machine

Why not strip your config back to the basic config (remove ieee8021x and the duplicate ctrl_interface line). Also does the interface have an IP address (do an "ifconfig | grep wlp0s20u7 -A 2")

[edit]
And what is the NIC?
[/edit]

Removed extra lines. The command gives the following:

wlp0s20u7: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500

        inet6 fe80::32b5:c2ff:fe20:eb94  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>

        ether 30:b5:c2:20:eb:94  txqueuelen 1000  (Ethernet)

It seems to me that there is no IPv4 address assign to this interface. The NIC is Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 11)

AFAIK the RTL8111/8168/8411 is a wired NIC only and it has its own issues. Please can you download and install the kmod-r8168 and kmod-r8169 drivers from here (assuming you have 7.x). Reboot afterwards.

For the Wireless NIC, start with "lscpi -k" it may have "wireless" or "ethernet" in the name. What is its name and what is the "Driver in use"?

Can you see the NIC in Webconfig > Server > IP Settings. It will need to have an IP address in a different subnet from your other NICs.

[edit]
Sorry, you've already said you've got a RTL8192CU. I'll have to research it but not tonight. Its too late.
[/edit]

It looks like you have a USB wireless NIC so running lspci won't help. From this link try something like:

lsusb -v | grep -E '\<(Bus|iProduct|bDeviceClass|bDeviceProtocol)' 2>/dev/null

Also can you please do a

lsmod | egrep '8192|8xxx'

I can compile the latest kmod-rtl8192cu driver tonight if necessary.

This is what I get when running the first command

lsusb -v | grep -E '\<(Bus|iProduct|bDeviceClass|bDeviceProtocol)' 2>/dev/null



Bus 001 Device 004: ID 0bda:8178 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8192CU 802.11n WLAN Adapter

  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)

  bDeviceProtocol         0 

  iProduct                2 USB WLAN

      (Bus Powered)

  bDeviceClass            0 (Defined at Interface level)

  bDeviceProtocol         0 

  (Bus Powered)

this is the response on the second command:

lsmod | egrep '8192|8xxx'



rtl8192cu              67814  0 

rtl_usb                18408  1 rtl8192cu

rtl8192c_common        53242  1 rtl8192cu

rtlwifi                70032  3 rtl_usb,rtl8192c_common,rtl8192cu

mac80211              661290  3 rtl_usb,rtlwifi,rtl8192cu

As I said before, everything was ok with the default driver=nl80211 and I could run my own AP and easily connect to it.

I am attaching a snapshot with IP configuration of my networks. As you can see the IP address of the wlan interface is missing.

I have also installed drivers for my Realtek LAN card as was suggested by you, Nick.


UPD. Tried to assign different static IP addresses to WLAN from other subnets with no success. All the time I get Ooops! Command execution failed

So you need to configure it with an IP address and change it to a fixed IP (hit the Edit button) and not DHCP. It must be on a different subnet from your WAN/External connection.

As I said I tried to assign different static IP addresses to WLAN from other subnets with no success. All the time I get Ooops! Command execution failed

For example, I tried: IP 192.168.0.10 with the mask 255.255.255.128

I can't reproduce that on my VM. I can set the interface role to LAN or HotLAN and assign a static IP and netmask.

What are the contents of /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-br0, /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-enp4s0 and /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlp0s20u7 and /etc/clearos/network.conf?

ifcfg-br0 is missing

ifcfg-enp4s0:

TYPE=Ethernet

BOOTPROTO=dhcp

DEFROUTE=yes

PEERDNS=yes

PEERROUTES=yes

IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=no

IPV6INIT=yes

IPV6_AUTOCONF=yes

IPV6_DEFROUTE=yes

IPV6_PEERDNS=yes

IPV6_PEERROUTES=yes

IPV6_FAILURE_FATAL=no

NAME=enp4s0

UUID=98fb81c5-7261-4d5c-ac34-267ab79886d9

DEVICE=enp4s0

ONBOOT=no

ifcfg-wlp0s20u8:

DEVICE=wlp0s20u8

TYPE="Wireless"

ONBOOT="yes"

USERCTL="no"

BOOTPROTO="static"

IPADDR="10.0.0.1"

NETMASK="255.0.0.0"

network.conf:

# Network mode

MODE="gateway"



# Network interface roles

EXTIF="enp4s0"

LANIF=""

DMZIF=""

HOTIF="wlp0s20u8"



# Domain and Internet Hostname

DEFAULT_DOMAIN="myksok.home"

INTERNET_HOSTNAME="gateway.myksok.home"



# Extra LANS

EXTRALANS=""



# ISP Maximum Speeds

I am completely confused. Your screen shot shows a wlp0s20u7 but you've given me the contents relating to wlp0s20u8 which is also how network.conf is set up. Also your screenshot shows a br0 and that is normally because an ifcfg-br0 file exists. Can you help me understand what is going on? Do any other ifcfg- files exist?

Sorry for the confusion. I reinstalled the system. I hoped to get a working configuration. Unfortunately, it still doesn't work as supposed to. Here is the list of files in the /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ directory:

ifcfg-enp4s0     ifdown-ipv6    ifup-TeamPort  ifup-post

ifcfg-lo              ifdown-isdn    ifup-aliases   ifup-ppp

ifcfg-wlp0s20u8  ifdown-post    ifup-bnep      ifup-routes

ifdown               ifdown-ppp     ifup-eth       ifup-sit

ifdown-Team      ifdown-routes  ifup-ippp      ifup-tunnel

ifdown-TeamPort  ifdown-sit     ifup-ipv6      ifup-wireless

ifdown-bnep      ifdown-tunnel  ifup-isdn      init.ipv6-global

ifdown-eth        ifup                  ifup-plip      network-functions

ifdown-ippp      ifup-Team      ifup-plusb     network-functions-ipv6

Can I have a matching screen shot of the IP settings and the output to "ls -la /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-[ew]*"?

Yes of course. The corresponding screenshot is attached. Here is what I get after the command:

[root@gateway ~]# ls -la /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-[ew]*

-rw-r--r--. 1 root root 277 Aug  3  2016 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-enp4s0

-rw-------  1 root root 116 Aug  2 21:12 /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-wlp0s20u8

That is really odd and something is nagging at the back of my mind but I don't know what. I don't recognise the TYPE="Wireless" but I guess it is OK. Did you or ClearOS set it? You can clearly see the IP address of the wireless NIC - 10.0.0.1 - in the ifcfg file but not in ClearOS. Can I suggest a netmask of something smaller like 255.255.255.0 unless you are a big outfit. Can you try changing permissions on ifcfg-wlp0s20u8 to 644 but I don't see why that would make a difference.

Is ldap running OK ("service slapd status")? Do you have any other seemingly unrelated errors in your logs? Is hostapd running? Do you see any errors if you try an "ifup wlp0s20u8"? You may have to down it first.

I'm going to need to sleep on this again.

Here we go. My nano PC has finally arrived
Installation went smoothly except one warning: "tsc: fast TSC calibration failed". I didn't pay attention since it didn't affect the installation process. But when I try to reboot or shut down the system it simply halts and stops reacting on any input device. This is known issue for Centos-based OSs run on low power Intel platforms. Besides that system works fine. Unfortunately, I didn't find any solution for my system (Celeron J1900). Probably I need to enable/disable some option in the BIOS. There are so many of them that I even don't have on my regular PC I will appreciate any help in this issue.

Regarding the main problem with Wireless AP. In this machine I get preinstalled a Broadcom Corporation BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 01) wifi mini-pcie card (as I said earlier I'm intended to replace it with Intel ac card). This time I could advance a little bit further. I can create a wlan network and give the DHCP server ability to assign the IP addresses for devices connecting to this AP (Static method doesn't work). But still there is no IP address allocated to this device. When I'm trying to connect with my phone it is permanently trying to obtain an IP address (instead of Identification error) with no success.

ldap is not running
hostapd is running
Also tried 10.0.0.1 with 255.0.0.0 netmask - no success.
LAN card is RTL8111/8168/8411.

Any ideas?

Can you do the bits I said in my last post?

Also, since you have a PCI-E card, Can you do an "lspci -k" and pick out the lines (down to driver in use) for this card.

1. ClearOS set up the type "Wireless".
2. Changed mask to 255.0.0.0 - doesn't help.
3. Changed permission to 644 - doesn't help.
4.

[root@gateway home]# service slapd status

Redirecting to /bin/systemctl status  slapd.service

● slapd.service - OpenLDAP Server Daemon

   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/slapd.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)

   Active: inactive (dead)

     Docs: man:slapd

           man:slapd-config

           man:slapd-hdb

           man:slapd-mdb

           file:///usr/share/doc/openldap-servers/guide.html

5. ifup and ifdown work ok on my wireless interface.
6.

02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 01)

        Subsystem: Broadcom Corporation Device 04d8

        Kernel driver in use: bcma-pci-bridge

Hope I didn't miss anything

ldap not running is an issue which needs to be fixed. Have you chosen your account manager (avoid Samba Directory for the moment)? Also please cut down your netmask to something smaller like 255.255.255.0. Lastly the lspci output could be important.

Our posts keep crossing!

For the netmask I said 255.255.255.0. I don't expect it to help but will stop you reserving 16777214 IP addresses for your WiFi!

Have you chosen LDAP for your directory server yet? If you have, please can you try:

service slapd start

service slapd status

There are some start up race condition bugs which the team are trying to squash at the moment. If it still does not start can you have a look in your logs for any errors.

Have you done anything about your LDAP Publish Policy? If you've not done anything, good. If you've tries publishing your policy, can you stop publishing it for the moment.

I am at a loss with your NIC. There seem to be so many posts about Broadcom drivers that I've no idea which are the best ones to use. I also don't understand why ClearOS is not picking up the IP address you are configuring. There is a command "iwlist" and possibly some others you can play around with but I'm not sure what you'll achieve with them.

The netmask you mentioned I've already tried with the well known result

I have not chosen LDAP for my directory server yet since I don't know what it is and why I need it. As I said I am new to Linux

Here is the output if needed:

[root@gateway ~]# service slapd status

Redirecting to /bin/systemctl status  slapd.service

● slapd.service - OpenLDAP Server Daemon

   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/slapd.service; disabled; vendor preset: disabled)

   Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Thu 2016-08-04 15:59:31 IDT; 7h ago

     Docs: man:slapd

           man:slapd-config

           man:slapd-hdb

           man:slapd-mdb

           file:///usr/share/doc/openldap-servers/guide.html



Aug 04 15:59:31 gateway.myksok.home prestart.sh[5492]: 57a33c33 /etc/openldap/slapd.conf: line 63: invalid path: ...tory

Aug 04 15:59:31 gateway.myksok.home prestart.sh[5492]: slaptest: bad configuration file!

Aug 04 15:59:31 gateway.myksok.home slapd[5511]: @(#) $OpenLDAP: slapd 2.4.40 (Jun 20 2016 14:09:48) $

                                                         [email protected]:/builddir/build/BUIL...slapd

Aug 04 15:59:31 gateway.myksok.home slapd[5511]: /etc/openldap/slapd.conf: line 63: invalid path: No such file o...ctory

Aug 04 15:59:31 gateway.myksok.home slapd[5511]: slapd stopped.

Aug 04 15:59:31 gateway.myksok.home slapd[5511]: connections_destroy: nothing to destroy.

Aug 04 15:59:31 gateway.myksok.home systemd[1]: slapd.service: control process exited, code=exited status=1

Aug 04 15:59:31 gateway.myksok.home systemd[1]: Failed to start OpenLDAP Server Daemon.

Aug 04 15:59:31 gateway.myksok.home systemd[1]: Unit slapd.service entered failed state.

Aug 04 15:59:31 gateway.myksok.home systemd[1]: slapd.service failed.

Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.

I have not done anything about my LDAP Publish Policy because of the above.

In my opinion my issue is not related to the driver installed in the system. It easily connects to my router without any problem.

I have a feeling that I didn't configure properly the hostname and the domain name of the computer. As I understand the hostname is simply a name of the PC. In the case of the domain name it is not clear for me is it related to the external or local network domain.

Hostname: gateway.myksok.home
Internet Hostname: gateway.myksok.home
Domain: myksok.home

In my virtual machine the problem still exists. Maybe it is some kind of software problem. As I said earlier in Kubuntu everything works like a charm.

I didn't realise your last efforts were in a VM. I probably would have dropped out of the conversation then as there are too many variables I don't understand.

Netmask you've always posted 255.0.0.0 which is mega-corp territory.

You'll need a directory server if you want to start adding users and you'll find you won't be able to access flexshares as root (and it is not a good idea even if you could). Can you initialise your directory server, please?

I am not clear on Hostname, Internet Hostname and Domain. Host name, I think is how you are known on your LAN. It can be the same as on the internet. Domain name is the name of your LAN domain. It does not have to be the same as your WAN domain. If you don't have a WAN domain, people often use something ending in .local or .lan and your internet hostname is how your server is known on the internet. I have my own domain and mine are set like yours.

It still could be a driver issue but unlikely. Your connection to your router is by your wired connection. Your wireless NIC uses a different driver. Can you do a, "lsmod | grep bcm"? Only some Broadcom drivers support AP mode. What is the output of "iwconfig"? In Kubuntu can you see which drivers it is using?

Nick, sorry for the confusion!
I am working with two configurations of ClearOS: one is installed in a normal way on my mini PC which I want to turn into a router (it has a PCI-E Broadcom wifi card), another is in a VM run on my regular PC (with USB RTL8192CU card). So usually I do the same job twice on two configurations. Since the results are similar I don't specify the platform. I decided to play with the VM as well when you wrote that you were unable to reproduce my situation on your VM. Besides that I also installed the latest version of Kubuntu 16.04 on my PC (card is RTL8192CU and the driver in use is Driver=rtl8192cu), where as I said, everything works fine.

iw list shows the following for the Broadcom chip (mini PC):

Supported interface modes:

                 * IBSS

                 * managed

                 * AP

                 * AP/VLAN

                 * monitor

[root@gateway ~]# lsmod | grep bcm

bcma                   51886  1 brcmsmac

and the output of "iwconfig":

[root@gateway ~]# iwconfig

wlp2s0b1  IEEE 802.11abgn  Mode:Master  Tx-Power=19 dBm

          Retry short limit:7   RTS thrff   Fragment thrff

          Power Managementn



lo        no wireless extensions.



enp3s0    no wireless extensions.



enp4s0    no wireless extensions.

Shortly I will try to configure LDAP service.

All you've shown so far is that everything should be OK. I am assuming you're using ClearOS 7 which is needed to support Master/AP mode with the brcmsmac driver. iw list shows it supports AP mode, iwconfig shows it is in Master mode (AP mode) so that looks OK.

If that is all OK and you've forced an IP address into ifcfg-wlp2s0b1, then why isn't ClearOS picking it up? I wonder if there is a filter/restriction somewhere on the file name? Even then an "ifup wlp2s0b1" should force the IP to be used from the ifcfg file even if the webconfig cannot see it. I presume "ifconfig" is still not showing an IP address for the NIC?

BTW I only mentioned a VM as it is the only thing I have easy access to for running ClearOS 7.x It is only a "mickey mouse" set up on my desktop with both NICs getting their addresses through NAT'd DHCP interfaces - no bridged interfaces or anything, and I access it from a port forward through the WAN interface. Definitely not a proper set up.

The situation gets more and more interesting.
I tried to see whether I can connect all my devices to the newly purchased device by wire. It turned to be tricky too. DHCP still does not work (IP address doesn't show up in the corresponding menu of the web-interface). When I assign a static IP address the system treats it as the DHCP server address. At least this what I see in the connection properties on the second device, see attached file (the mini pc address is 192.168.1.20 allocated by the router). After all I receive system with its own IP address but without access to the Internet and to the mini pc. I tried to connect it directly to the Internet by changing the operational mode of my ISP provider modem to bridge, so the mini pc obtains the external IP address. Also didn't help. Played with the IP addresses and again without a clue what to do.

"ifconfig" is showing an IP address of the second LAN interface if I manually assign a static address. After that my second computer (Windows 7) can obtain an IP address and even correctly recognize the DNS servers of my provider. But in less than a minute the address changes to something like 169.254....

I'm completely puzzled

How many NIC's does your new computer have?
What is the output of

ifconfig | grep ^[a-z] -A 1

cat /etc/clearos/network.conf

cat /etc/dnsmasq.d/dhcp.conf

It sounds like you have more than one NIC connected to your LAN. If you do, that will fail due to a routing loop.

If you change the router to bridge mode and you have ADSL, you need to change the ClearOS WAN to PPPoE.

In your tests, have you made sure you only have one DHCP server active on your LAN at any one time?

Have you made sure each NIC is on a different subnet?

I have two LAN interfaces and one WiFi card on my newly purchased mini pc.

These are the outputs:

[root@gateway ~]# ifconfig | grep ^[a-z] -A 1

enp3s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500

        inet 192.168.1.20  netmask 255.255.255.0  broadcast 192.168.1.255

--

enp4s0: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500

        inet 192.168.0.128  netmask 255.255.255.128  broadcast 192.168.0.255

--

lo: flags=73<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING>  mtu 65536

        inet 127.0.0.1  netmask 255.0.0.0

--

wlp2s0b1: flags=4163<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,MULTICAST>  mtu 1500

        inet6 fe80::2eb0:5dff:feb8:be3e  prefixlen 64  scopeid 0x20<link>



[root@gateway ~]# cat /etc/clearos/network.conf

# Network mode

MODE="gateway"



# Network interface roles

EXTIF="enp3s0"

LANIF="enp4s0 wlp2s0b1"

DMZIF=""

HOTIF=""



# Domain and Internet Hostname

DEFAULT_DOMAIN="myksok.domain"

INTERNET_HOSTNAME="gateway.myksok.home"



# Extra LANS

EXTRALANS=""



# ISP Maximum Speeds

WLP2S0B1_MAX_DOWNSTREAM=0

WLP2S0B1_MAX_UPSTREAM=0

ENP3S0_MAX_DOWNSTREAM=0

ENP3S0_MAX_UPSTREAM=0



[root@gateway ~]# cat /etc/dnsmasq.d/dhcp.conf

read-ethers

My laptop connected to this pc via enp4s0 interface has IP address 169.254.....

I have a Docsis 3 modem which doesn't demand any login and passwords. When it is in a bridge mode it allows to connect only one device to the Internet and it assigns an external IP address to the device. I tried to disable DHCP on my pc when my modem works as a router but with no success.

I don't know how to check how many DHCP servers work at a time. I tried to assign a static IP to the second LAN (to which the rest of devices are connected) as well as let the system do it by choosing DHCP option.

When I manually assign an IP address I always make sure each NIC is on a different subnet.

You have an issue with enp4s0. You're not allowed to use the first or last address in any subnet. In your case you have used the first in a /25 network. Perhaps change it to .129.

Also you have not configured any DHCP servers.

I've still no idea about the wireless connection.

UPD. The issue with rebooting/shutting down the system is solved! Here is the solution. One needs to find in BIOS and switch the XHCI Mode from Auto to Enabled. After that there is no problem with restarting the system.