Create wireless access point and share internet connection with nmcli

You can create a hotspot with:

nmcli dev wifi hotspot ifname wlp4s0 ssid test password "test1234"

where wlp4s0 is the name of your Wifi interface.

On a Centos 7 it looks like this.

Check if AP is possible at all:

iw list | less

and search for "AP" among supported interface modes.

Browse your devices to find the name:

nmcli d

And setup and start your hotspot.

Mind that wifi-device, connection-name and hotspot-ssid are specific to your system.

nmcli c add type wifi ifname wifi-device con-name connection-name autoconnect no ssid hotspot-ssid
nmcli connection modify connection-name 802-11-wireless.mode ap 802-11-wireless.band bg ipv4.method shared
nmcli connection modify connection-name wifi-sec.key-mgmt wpa-psk
nmcli connection modify connection-name wifi-sec.psk "le password"
nmcli connection up connection-name

Check also:

• https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-US/Red_Hat_Enterprise_Linux/7/html/Networking_Guide/sec-Using_the_NetworkManager_Command_Line_Tool_nmcli.html

• https://www.hogarthuk.com/?q=node/8

I created a Hotspot with the GNOME Network-Manager. The problem was, that I can not configure the SSID and password in GUI. If you create the Hotspot with the Network-Manager GUI, it creates the file /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/Hotspot. In that file it is possible to edit the SSID and the password.

sudo vim /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/Hotspot

The content of the file looks like this:

[connection]
id=Hotspot
uuid=0bf627gd-8e34-48c6-865a-06f898b4y1hb
type=wifi
autoconnect=true
permissions=
secondaries=

[wifi]
hidden=false
mac-address=YOUR_WIFI_INTERFACE_MAC_ADDRESS
mac-address-blacklist=
mode=ap
seen-bssids=
ssid=SSID_NAME

[wifi-security]
group=ccmp;
key-mgmt=wpa-psk
pairwise=ccmp;
proto=rsn;
psk=YOUR_WIFI_AP_PASSWORD

[ipv4]
dns-search=
method=shared

[ipv6]
dns-search=
method=auto

I changed the ssid and the psk properties to my needs. To enable autostart you have to set the parameter autoconnect to true. Then I restarted my computer because the command: sudo systemctl restart NetworkManager for network restart seems not to work correctly, because in the Network-Manager GUI:

I have no wireless network settings anymore and also the following command worked not before the restart. After restart you can use the nmcli command to start the access point.

nmcli con up Hotspot ifname YOUR_WIFI_INTERFACE

YOUR_WIFI_INTERFACE you can find out with the command iwconfig.

I used Antergos / Arch Linux for the above solution and found the hint to this at the ask.fedoraproject.org site.