[Solved] Ask4 Student Internet, eth0-wlan0 AP using bridge

Question

Didn't want to 'pollute' the wiki, in case this isn't the best way of doing, what I did; but it caused me enough frustration to not document it.
Basically, needed to create an access point using a wireless dongle to get my Nexus on the internet (Ask4's wireless routers aren't great ). Also as NAT stuff is "forbidden" on their servers/whatevers, needed to use bridging. Be warned - may kill your system/do funky stuff.
So...
1. Need to find out if your dongle is compatible with Master Mode (or AP mode) - loads of websites/wikis on this
2. Install hostapd (see Arch's wiki)
3. Create a hostapd.conf file in your home directory (just for testing - the one in /etc/hostapd is 'large'
#change wlan0 to your wireless device
interface=wlan0
driver=nl80211
ssid=test
channel=1
bridge=br0
4. Create the /etc/network.d/bridge file (see Arch's wiki)
INTERFACE="br0"
CONNECTION="bridge"
DESCRIPTION="Bridge wired and wireless connection"
# Only add wired interface here, hostapd will add wireless
BRIDGE_INTERFACES="eth0"
IP="dhcp"
#IP="static"
#ADDR='10.0.0.10'
#GATEWAY='10.0.0.1'
#DNS='10.0.0.1'
To get it to work with Ask4, you need eth0 to have DHCP enabled for this bit
5. enable and start [email protected]
6. stop dhcpcd.service
7. Start hostapd
hostapd ~/hostapd.conf
to see if everything works
8. Try connecting to the network using your device (should work)
9. Once you've finished using it, kill the hostapd process
10. Stop [email protected]
11. Start [email protected] to get the internet working again.
If everything works, you probably want to go back and edit the hostapd conf to give it some security.
Useful sites:
http://nims11.wordpress.com/2012/04/27/ … ess-point/

Answer 1

After switching from netcfg to netctl everything worked "out-of-the-box". The bridge gets to be the new standard network interface and all traffic on the machine gets directed through it. YAY