Linux box as wireless router?

I have cable broadband, and a separate cable modem and router.

The wireless on the router seems to have died, I have done various tests to confirm this.

Is there any way I can use my linux mint / ubuntu HTPC (which is the only machine next to the modem) as a wireless router?

All the other computers are running Windows (XP/Vista).

Any suggestions will be appreciated.

 

Sure you can, add a nic to the PC and connect it to a cheap wireless access point.

Software wise you'll probably need just a DHCP daemon and configure IPTables (for the NAT/Forwarding/Firewall)

After that, the sky is the limit, DNS server, (transparent) proxy, ...

 

The HTPC has an onboard NIC and a wireless card installed now, do I need other hardware, or can I sort this out tonight?

Ninja Edit: I'm a bit of a linux noobie, so don't assume too much!

 

It depends on the wireless card. It has to be able to do 'master' mode.

 

And how do I find that out?!

It's a b43 card, but I don't know exactly what drivers it's using since it worked immediately on Linux Mint (though not on Mythbunutu, despite both being Ubunutu-based).

 

Given your card is "wlan0", try:

Code:

sudo ifconfig wlan0 mode master

 

Code:

htpc jez # iwconfig wlan0 mode master
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.

Looks a bit like I'm out of luck!

PS: (for confirmation)

Code:

iwconfig --help
Usage: iwconfig [interface]
                interface essid {NNN|any|on|off}
                interface mode {managed|ad-hoc|master|...}
...

 

I know the ifconfig syntax but 'man ifconfig' will tell you even more

And yes, no luck... You can still do the NIC + Wireless AP tough...

Ninja EDIT: You didn't try it as root (with sudo), which is required...

 

I just included the usage snipet to confirm the syntax for this version of iwconfig.

BTW, I su'd to root, so that's not it, I think it's my hardware.

 

Ok, my bad then. Your hardware is indeed the most likely, because only a few wireless cards (which are typically clients) can do master mode. That's why I initially suggested the NIX + AP route

 

Okay, many thanks for your help.

 

brctl addbr br0
brctl addif br0 wlan0
brctl addif br0 eth0
ifconfig br0 <lan_ip> up

http://www.linuxfoundation.org/en/Net:Bridge

Is that not what you want?

 

Not at all, you are bridging connections, which isn't the same as routing (NAT)

 

Any software that I can add to help?
Driver updates perhaps?

 

As Glider already said, you are not running the command as root. As such it does not have the priviledges it needs to change the mode of the Wlan card.

Run the command exactly as Glider wrote it. Including the sudo prefix. I included it here again:

Code:

sudo ifconfig wlan0 mode master

 

read his post again, he is running as the root account, sudo is unnecessary. note the prompt is a # rather than a $

i had wondered about doing this a while back, but after 30s on google dismissed it as impossible. i should have known you could do anything with linux. does anybody know of a list of cards that will work in master mode?

 

Also, I believe I need to use iwconfig since it's my wireless card.

 

Nope, ifconfig is the command to use. With iwconfig you set the SSID, encryption and the likes

 

Code:

htpc jez # ifconfig wlan0 mode master
mode: Unknown host
ifconfig: `--help' gives usage information.

Code:

htpc jez # iwconfig wlan0 mode master
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.

I have a weirder issue though:

Code:

jez@htpc ~ $ sudo ls
sudo: unable to resolve host htpc
...

This has only started happening recently.
How is it that it can't resolve itself?!

Fortunately, it doesn't seem to stop it from doing anything.

 

This is quite weird, as 'ls' doesn't require any resolving, it just lists the files in the current directory... Seems you have quite a borked install...