Home / server / Questions / 1114002
Accepted
A. Trevelyan
Asked: 2022-10-26 10:00:07 +0800 CST

Hostapd failed to start - Failed to initialize interface

  • 772

I'm trying to set up hostapd on linux machine as a network authenticator with 802.1x.

I've been mostly following this guide, with some adaptations since I'm using Ubuntu Jammy instead of RHEL, and using veth interfaces in the bridge instead of physical ones.

I created the hostapd.conf file as instructed with the content as they described - My bridge interface is br0 like in the sample, I changed the own_ip_addr to the IP on interface br0, and changed the nas_identifier, auth_server_addr, auth_server_shared_secret, acct_server_addr, and acct_server_shared_secret to match the config on my RADIUS server.

Everything else is the same as the example file, but for some reason hostapd wont start. /var/log/syslog says there is an error in the config file but doesn't really explain what the problem is:

Oct 25 13:47:13 blackfox systemd[1]: hostapd.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 320.
Oct 25 13:47:13 blackfox hostapd[347060]: 1 errors found in configuration file '/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf'
Oct 25 13:47:13 blackfox hostapd[347060]: Failed to set up interface with /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
Oct 25 13:47:13 blackfox hostapd[347060]: Failed to initialize interface
Oct 25 13:47:13 blackfox systemd[1]: hostapd.service: Control process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Oct 25 13:47:13 blackfox systemd[1]: hostapd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Oct 25 13:47:15 blackfox systemd[1]: hostapd.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 321.
Oct 25 13:47:15 blackfox hostapd[347062]: 1 errors found in configuration file '/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf'
Oct 25 13:47:15 blackfox hostapd[347062]: Failed to set up interface with /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
Oct 25 13:47:15 blackfox hostapd[347062]: Failed to initialize interface
Oct 25 13:47:15 blackfox systemd[1]: hostapd.service: Control process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Oct 25 13:47:15 blackfox systemd[1]: hostapd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.
Oct 25 13:47:17 blackfox systemd[1]: hostapd.service: Scheduled restart job, restart counter is at 322.
Oct 25 13:47:17 blackfox hostapd[347065]: 1 errors found in configuration file '/etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf'
Oct 25 13:47:17 blackfox hostapd[347065]: Failed to set up interface with /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf
Oct 25 13:47:17 blackfox hostapd[347065]: Failed to initialize interface
Oct 25 13:47:17 blackfox systemd[1]: hostapd.service: Control process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Oct 25 13:47:17 blackfox systemd[1]: hostapd.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

Does anyone have any idea what's going on?

linux-networking hostapd

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Running

    hostapd -dd /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf

    Gave some more details as to what was going on. RHEL has a special administrative group called wheel which is non-existent in Ubuntu.

    Went back to the config file and changed

    ctrl_interface_group=wheel

    to replace wheel with either 0, root, 27, sudo

    It started successfully with all of them.

    • 0