Can't SSH into Pi with Hostapd

[azsde]

Hello everyone,

I've followed this tutorial to turn my pi into an AP.

So far so good, I can connect with any machine to the PI's AP.

However, I can't SSH into the pi when no ethernet is plugged.

The connection is timing out.

As soon as I plug an ethernet cable, I can SSH into my pi again (using the AP, not the ethernet).

Am I missing something here ?

[thagrol]

Are you trying to connect by hostname or IP address?

Is the machine you're trying to connect from actually connected to the Pi's hotspot?

With two network interfaces the Pi will have two IP addresses.Which one your client is using (or which one the hostname it's ising resolves to) affect which interface on the Pi it tries to connect to.

[azsde]

Are you trying to connect by hostname or IP address?

Is the machine you're trying to connect from actually connected to the Pi's hotspot?

With two network interfaces the Pi will have two IP addresses.Which one your client is using (or which one the hostname it's ising resolves to) affect which interface on the Pi it tries to connect to.

Hello,

Yes, my phone is running JuiceSSH and is connected to the Pi's hotspot.

My pi has the following IPs:

• eth0 : 172.20.1.22
• wlan0 : 192.168.1.1

My phone has the IP: 192.168.1.2

As soon as I remove the ethernet cable, I loose the SSH connection, despite being connected over WiFi directly onto my Pi's AP.

[thagrol]

Curious.

What IP address is you phone/juicessh using to connect to the Pi? 172.20.1.22 or 192.168.1.1?

[azsde]

Curious.

What IP address is you phone/juicessh using to connect to the Pi? 172.20.1.22 or 192.168.1.1?

192.168.1.1

I can't even ping my pi over wifi when the ethernet is disconnected

[epoch1970]

Whit Raspbian Stretch, when you unplug/plug the cable the system resets network interfaces and restarts services.
From you description I would assume you missed something in dhcpcd.conf or hostapd.conf, and either wlan0 gets reconfigured as a client to your wifi LAN (using whatever is configured in wpa_supplicant.conf), or hostapd itself fails to restart.

Perhaps you can check /var/log/syslog and "systemctl status" and find a clue?

[azsde]

This subject can be closed, it was a phone issue.

For some reason, when no internet is available on the wifi AP, it tries to connect to 192.168.1.1 over my LTE connection

For the time beeing I turn off the data and I can connect just fine.

[epoch1970]

For some reason, when no internet is available on the wifi AP, it tries to connect to 192.168.1.1 over my LTE connection

Apple calls that "wifi assist", a feature where the phone tries to use 3G/4G to connect when the interface on the wifi network can't reach some destination.
When you disconnect ethernet from the Pi, the phone has no longer access to the Internet via the default gateway, so "wifi assist" kicks-in.

You can configure your DHCP server instance on the Pi to not send the "default gateway" information.
The phone will use wifi to connect to 192.168.1.0 and its other interface to connect to the Internet.
With dnsmasq, you would add to your config "dhcp-option=3", which suppresses sending the default gateway address to clients.
And also probably "dhcp-option=6" which tells dnsmasq not to send DNS servers information.