Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1000 not able create wifi hotspot on Ubuntu 24.04

seseeley · January 27, 2025, 11:30pm

I’m not able to turn on wifi hotspot using the GUI, even with LAN connected.

Ubuntu Version: 22.04 LTS
Desktop Environment: GNOME
Problem Description:
I’m not able to turn on wifi hotspot using the GUI, even with LAN connected. However wifi does work for this laptop.
I’m running Ubuntu 24.04 on a Toshiba Portege R835-P81 with Intel Centrino Wireless-N 1000 hardware.
When I run “nmcli -f WIFI-PROPERTIES.AP device show wlp4s0” I get “WIFI-PROPERTIES.AP: no”.

I know this wifi HW can share internet with other devices over wifi because I do this all the time when I boot this laptop to Windows 10.
Intel has no Linux support for older wifi HW like mine.

I followed instructions in sticky “Before posting in Networking & Wireless” to post information here https://termbin.com/2rj4

I my question is, are there other drivers or workarounds to fix this?
I hate the idea of having to maintain Windows forever just for a beer brewing appliance that needs this capability.

Thanks for any help or insight,
Steve

ogra · January 28, 2025, 3:18pm

I do maintain a snap for UbuntuCore that utilizes one of network-managers example scripts to fire up an AP which does not need any support from the driver side at all, you should be able to just grab their script and run it to turn your laptop into an AP …

the script is sadly all written for python2 though so it needs some patching …

Here is the script:

github.com

NetworkManager/NetworkManager/blob/main/examples/python/dbus/wifi-hotspot.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
# SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
#
# Copyright (C) 2010 - 2012 Red Hat, Inc.
#

#
# This example starts or stops a wifi hotspot
#
# Configuration settings are described at
# https://networkmanager.dev/docs/api/latest/ref-settings.html
#

import dbus, sys, time

our_uuid = "2b0d0f1d-b79d-43af-bde1-71744625642e"

s_con = dbus.Dictionary(
    {"type": "802-11-wireless", "uuid": our_uuid, "id": "Test Hotspot"}
)

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And this is the patch I’m using on top of it in my snap to make it work on py3:

github.com

ogra1/nm-wifi-hotspot-snap/blob/main/patches/wifi-hotspot.patch

--- examples/python/dbus/wifi-hotspot.py	2021-08-03 14:36:45.485021019 +0000
+++ wifi-hotspot	2021-08-03 14:33:22.135171775 +0000
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
-#!/usr/bin/env python
+#!/usr/bin/env python3
 # SPDX-License-Identifier: GPL-2.0-or-later
 #
 # Copyright (C) 2010 - 2012 Red Hat, Inc.
@@ -12,23 +12,37 @@
 #
 
 import dbus, sys, time
+import subprocess
 
 our_uuid = "2b0d0f1d-b79d-43af-bde1-71744625642e"
 
+ssid = "UbuntuCore Hotspot"
+psk = "0123456789"
+
+ssid_pipe = subprocess.Popen(['snapctl', 'get', 'ssid'], stdout=subprocess.PIPE)

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(there are some snap specifics in that patch you might want to leave out though)

seseeley · January 28, 2025, 3:59pm

Thanks for the help. I’m understand python. But I don’t know snap except it being a application delivery mechanism. Are you using snap as a shell? I wouldn’t know what snap specifics I would want to leave out?

ogra · January 28, 2025, 4:11pm

Sorry, I was assuming too much, essentially you might be fine just using the first line of the patch to make it run on python3, the rest is snap related (so people can use the snap set and snap get commands to configure it) and you will likely not need it when running the .py script standalone …

seseeley · January 28, 2025, 5:20pm

OK, thanks. I’ll give this a go and report back. Thanks again.

seseeley · January 28, 2025, 5:36pm

I’m still having the same problem I’ve had when trying other command line tools. Looks like the underlying driver just will not allow AP mode. But thanks for your help.

dbus.exceptions.DBusException: org.freedesktop.NetworkManager.UnknownConnection: Connection ‘Test Hotspot’ is not available on device wlp4s0 because profile is not compatible with device (the device does not support Access Point mode)