[SOLVED]realtek hostapd for kernel 4

[Hove]

I've been successfully using realtek WiFi dongles as a WAP using the custom realtek hostapd code.

After an upgrade to the latest code (sudo apt-get update + sudo apt-get dist-upgrade), the WAP doesn't work. It works at the driver level but hostapd doesn't work, regardless of whether I use the standard distribution hostapd, or one of the custom versions that worked on kernel 3.

Realtek don't provide kernel 4 drivers on their site.

So two questions:

• has anyone got realtek WiFi dongles WAP with kernel 4 or...
• is there a _small_ WiFi dongle which supports WAP natively - perhaps the official RPi dongle?

TIA

Oh, and before anyone just points me at http://elinux.org/RPi_USB_Wi-Fi_Adapters, there's nothing useful there about WAP / soft AP dongles confirmed to work.

[Hove]

OK, according to Pimoroni the official dongle does support WAP / soft AP. Only problem - they're out of stock!

[Hove]

UPDATE: it's not the upgrade to kernel version 4 - I have another system with the same chipset WAPing with that kernel, so it's the hostapd I'm using or something else. I'll keep digging.

[Hove]

It's nothing to do with the updated kernel, it's a DHCP issue which I've yet to resolve.

[Hove]

The problem was to do with the new GUI network tool; although I'd configured a static address in /etc/network/interfaces for wlan0, this was being ignored, and I had to configure the static address into the GUI app too.

Where does the GUI app store the local IP address?