There is a bug in hostapd that prevents it from being used with the prism54 driver. According to this post: http://lists.shmoo.com/pipermail/hostap/2005-June/010464.html interface names like eth0ap should only be used when hostapd is using the hostap driver (driver=hostap in /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf). However, in hostapd version 0.5.4, on line 979 of driver_prism54.c "ap" is explicitly appended to the device name. This results in the error you see in this post: http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-341230.html As you can see from the above post, this error was present in hostapd 0.4.1. It is still present in hostapd 0.5.4. And the fix is still to simply remove the "ap" from the snprintf(ifr.ifr_name,.... line in driver_prism54.c. After removing those 2 characters from driver_prism54.c and recompiling hostapd, it starts up just fine: delta-9 hostapd-0.5.4 # /etc/init.d/hostapd start * Starting hostapd ... Configuration file: /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf Using interface eth3 with hwaddr 00:09:5b:92:bb:f9 and ssid 'jimbo' [ ok ] delta-9 hostapd-0.5.4 # Reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. try to use hostapd with the prism54 driver 2. 3. Portage 2.1.1-r2 (default-linux/x86/2006.1/server, gcc-4.1.1, glibc-2.4-r4, 2.6.19.2 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.19.2 i686 AMD Athlon(tm) Gentoo Base System version 1.12.6 Last Sync: Mon, 22 Jan 2007 15:59:01 +0000 app-admin/eselect-compiler: [Not Present] dev-java/java-config: [Not Present] dev-lang/python: 2.4.3-r4 dev-python/pycrypto: 2.0.1-r5 dev-util/ccache: [Not Present] dev-util/confcache: [Not Present] sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.17 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.61 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10 sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1-r3 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.3.14 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.22 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.17-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -s" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/3.5/env /usr/kde/3.5/share/config /usr/kde/3.5/shutdown /usr/share/X11/xkb /usr/share/config" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/env.d /etc/gconf /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/terminfo" CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon-xp -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer -s" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks metadata-transfer sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1 -Wl,--relax -Wl,--sort-common -Wl,--as-needed" MAKEOPTS="-j1" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --delete-after --stats --timeout=180 --exclude='/distfiles' --exclude='/local' --exclude='/packages'" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="/usr/local/portage-overlay" SYNC="rsync://jove.eng.yale.edu/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 3dnow X alsa_cards_ali5451 alsa_cards_als4000 alsa_cards_atiixp alsa_cards_atiixp-modem alsa_cards_bt87x alsa_cards_ca0106 alsa_cards_cmipci alsa_cards_emu10k1x alsa_cards_ens1370 alsa_cards_ens1371 alsa_cards_es1938 alsa_cards_es1968 alsa_cards_fm801 alsa_cards_hda-intel alsa_cards_intel8x0 alsa_cards_intel8x0m alsa_cards_maestro3 alsa_cards_trident alsa_cards_usb-audio alsa_cards_via82xx alsa_cards_via82xx-modem alsa_cards_ymfpci alsa_pcm_plugins_adpcm alsa_pcm_plugins_alaw alsa_pcm_plugins_asym alsa_pcm_plugins_copy alsa_pcm_plugins_dmix alsa_pcm_plugins_dshare alsa_pcm_plugins_dsnoop alsa_pcm_plugins_empty alsa_pcm_plugins_extplug alsa_pcm_plugins_file alsa_pcm_plugins_hooks alsa_pcm_plugins_iec958 alsa_pcm_plugins_ioplug alsa_pcm_plugins_ladspa alsa_pcm_plugins_lfloat alsa_pcm_plugins_linear alsa_pcm_plugins_meter alsa_pcm_plugins_mulaw alsa_pcm_plugins_multi alsa_pcm_plugins_null alsa_pcm_plugins_plug alsa_pcm_plugins_rate alsa_pcm_plugins_route alsa_pcm_plugins_share alsa_pcm_plugins_shm alsa_pcm_plugins_softvol apache2 bash-completion berkdb bitmap-fonts bzip2 cli cracklib crypt dlloader dri elibc_glibc fortran gdbm gif gpm iconv ieee1394 input_devices_evdev input_devices_keyboard input_devices_mouse isdnlog jpeg kdeenablefinal kdehiddenvisibility kernel_linux lcd_devices_bayrad lcd_devices_cfontz lcd_devices_cfontz633 lcd_devices_glk lcd_devices_hd44780 lcd_devices_lb216 lcd_devices_lcdm001 lcd_devices_mtxorb lcd_devices_ncurses lcd_devices_text ldap libg++ logrotate mailwrapper memlimit mmx mysql ncurses nptl nptlonly offensive pam pcre perl png ppds pppd python readline reflection samba session sharedmem spl sse ssl tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev unicode userland_GNU video_cards_none video_cards_nv video_cards_nvidia video_cards_vga xml xorg zlib" Unset: CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LINGUAS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS
Please, don't refer to forums.g.o. for error messages, it's wasting everyone's time. Post all relevant info here.
is this still present in version 0.5.7?
I'm sorry I am no longer using a prism54 card or the hostap driver, I can't help with this.
