This is a command-line controller for an access point (only the Atheros AR5KAP and Broadcom BCM94718NR right now). It was built specifically to allow testers to write perl code to control the APs. The documentation is online here.
To install the code change into the top folder and enter:
python setup.py installYou may need to run this as root if you are installing it system-wide.
You will end up with a command line command called atheros (you can rename it to whatever you find easier to remember). To see the options:
atheros -husage: atheros [-h] [--pudb] [--pdb] [-s] [-d] [--hostname HOSTNAME]
[--username USERNAME] [--password PASSWORD]
{up,down,destroy,status,reset,channel,ssid,ip,security,command}
...
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--pudb Run the `pudb` debugger (default=False).
--pdb Run the `pdb` debugger (default=False).
-s, --silent If True only emit error messages (default=False)
-d, --debug If True emit debug messages (default=False)
--hostname HOSTNAME The hostname for the AP (leave unset for default).
--username USERNAME The user-login for the AP (leave unset for default)
--password PASSWORD The login password for the AP (Leave unset for
default)
APCommand subcommands:
Available Sub-Commands
{up,down,destroy,status,reset,channel,ssid,ip,security,command}
APCommand sub-commands
up Bring the AP up
down Take the AP down
destroy Destroy a specific virtual AP
status Get some information for an interface
reset Reset to factory defaults
channel Change the AP channel
ssid Change the SSID
ip Change the IP Address
security Change the security
command Execute an arbitrary command.The atheros interface is built around sub-commands (which are listed by the -h option). Each sub-command has its own set of options separate from the atheros. To see them pass the -h option to the sub-command. e.g. to see the channel sub-command options:
atheros channel -hTo actually change the channel to, say 36:
atheros channel 36
If you aren't familiar with python's sub-command interface note that the options have to go with their sub-command. The atheros has a -d flag that will output the access points output to the screen (d is for debug), but the channel subcommand doesn't. This is valid:
atheros -d channel 36This is not:
atheros channel 36 -dThere is also a separate command for the Broadcom AP. The interface is similar to the atheros command:
Broadcom -husage: broadcom [-h] [--pudb] [--pdb] [-s] [-d] [--hostname HOSTNAME]
[--username USERNAME] [--password PASSWORD] [--sleep SLEEP]
{status,channel,disable,enable,ssid} ...
optional arguments:
-h, --help show this help message and exit
--pudb Run the `pudb` debugger (default=False).
--pdb Run the `pdb` debugger (default=False).
-s, --silent If True only emit error messages (default=False)
-d, --debug If True emit debug messages (default=False)
--hostname HOSTNAME The hostname for the AP (leave unset for default).
--username USERNAME The user-login for the AP (leave unset for default)
--password PASSWORD The login password for the AP (Leave unset for
default)
--sleep SLEEP Seconds to sleep after web server call (default=0.5)
Broadcom subcommands:
Available Sub-Commands
{status,channel,disable,enable,ssid}
Broadcom sub-commands
status Get some information for an interface
channel Change the AP channel
disable Disable a wireless interface.
enable Enable an interface.
ssid Change the SSIDThe code was written using pweave so for each .py file there are accompanying .rst and .pnw files.
When you run the install command, it will attempt to download pudb, requests and beautifulsoup4. You can get away with removing the pudb requirement from the conf.py file if you don't want to debug the code but requests and beatifulsoup4 are required for it to work.
Since the code was written with pweave, the repository is really a sphinx-repository as well as a code repository. To build it you need to have sphinx and sphinxcontrib-plantuml installed (as well as the code itself). If you don't already have plantuml and you are using a debian-based system you can install it with apt-get:
apt-get install plantumlIf you don't want to install it, edit the conf.py file so it isn't one of the listed extensions and you can still build the documentation, it just won't have any UML diagrams. If you have everything installed and you are in the same folder as the Makefile and setup.py files then you can type the following to install the requirements and build the documentation (either with admin privileges (i.e. sudo) or in a virtual environment):
python setup.py install
pip install sphinx
pip install sphinxcontrib-plantuml
make htmlThe documentation will be in a folder called build/html/ in the same directory. You can also create a pdf with make latexpdf but the code hasn't been groomed for it so it might not look quite right.