Not a Linux guy. I've played around with it at the fringes since the late 90's but I've never had a need to dive deep.

I have a campground on which I have a couple of WiFi bridges to relay internet back over about a 1/2 mile of property to campsites. The bridge works great point to point but at the far end I need an access point. Using a standard off the shelf router is OK, but I am wanted something with a little more flexibility and power, so I've been tinkering around with OpenWrt.

I have 3 old Raspberry Pi's, the 'B' model with onboard ethernet and two USB ports. OpenWrt boots up just fine and auto configured the ethernet port. My trouble is I want the AP to run off a USB Realtek 8187 Omni directional antenna I have laying around. This is really an attempt to utilize spare hardware without having to spend more money in the end.

I've been able to hack up the USB driver and that seems to be working:

lsusb
root@Sunnyside:~# lsusb
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0bda:8187 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8187 Wireless Adapter
Bus 001 Device 004: ID 046d:c31c Logitech, Inc. Keyboard K120 for Business
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0424:ec00 Standard Microsystems Corp. SMSC9512/9514 Fast Ethernet Adapter
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 0424:9512 Standard Microsystems Corp. LAN9500 Ethernet 10/100 Adapter / SMSC9512/9514 Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

But I don't see an interface I can configure:

ifconfig
root@Sunnyside:~# ifconfig

br-lan Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr B8:27:EB:2C:EE:87
      inet addr:192.168.0.76  Bcast:192.168.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
      inet6 addr: fd91:dde:fbc7::1/60 Scope:Global
      inet6 addr: fe80::ba27:ebff:fe2c:ee87/64 Scope:Link
      UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
      RX packets:3805 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
      TX packets:2625 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
      collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
      RX bytes:345208 (337.1 KiB)  TX bytes:615605 (601.1 KiB)

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr B8:27:EB:2C:EE:87
      UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
      RX packets:4506 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
      TX packets:2625 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
      collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
      RX bytes:495212 (483.6 KiB)  TX bytes:646509 (631.3 KiB)

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
      inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
      inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
      UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
      RX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
      TX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
      collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
      RX bytes:1621 (1.5 KiB)  TX bytes:1621 (1.5 KiB)

The /etc/config/wireless file:

config wifi-device 'radio0'
    option type 'mac80211'
    option channel '11'
    option hwmode '11g'
    option path 'platform/bcm2708_usb/usb1/1-1/1-1.3/1-1.3:1.0'
    option txpower '20'
    option country '00'

config wifi-iface
    option device 'radio0'
    option network 'lan'
    option mode 'ap'
    option encryption 'none'
    option ssid 'Sunnyside'

Sorry if the formatting is hard to follow.  Any clues as to what to do would be appreciated.  Please remember Linux is a little foreign to me so please don't assume I know any steps required or how to execute any process necessary.

Thank you.

The Linux open-source Realtek 8187 driver only supports STA mode, not AP.  That dongle therefore has limited usefulness.

What hardware are your WiFi bridges?  Can they run OpenWrt?  If so, you could open an AP interface directly on the far one.

(Last edited by mk24 on 27 Aug 2017, 22:10)

Well crap.  Is that a driver limitation or hardware related?  Yeah that's all kinds of things I can do but this was supposed to be a neat solution only needing configuration, not money.  Ah well.