This tutorial is trying to help those who want to create AP wifi hotspot in Ubuntu Laptop but stuck at “Wifi Hotspot: Access Point Mode Is Not Supported By This Device” error message.
I’ve written three tutorials about how to turn Ubuntu Laptop into a wifi hotspot for Android, and Windows phones. Access Point Mode does not support issue is one of the most asked questions from my readers. Below I will show how to fix it using Broadcom bcm4313 as example.
UPDATE: THIS TUTORIAL IS OUTDATED! It does NOT work anymore in current Ubuntu releases!
1. Press Ctrl+Alt+T on keyboard to open terminal. When it opens, run the command below to tell your wireless chip information:
lspci | grep -i Network
In my case, it outputs:
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4313 802.11bgn Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01)
The chip id is BCM4313, manufactured by Broadcom.
2. Check the below table. Find out the driver that works for your wireless adapter and support AP mode.
For Broadcom, there are three drivers that support AP mode, but only brcmsmac (check link page for supported chips) support wifi chip BCM4313.
| Driver | Manufacturer | Support AP Mode |
| adm8211 | ADMtek/Infineon | no |
| airo | Aironet/Cisco | ? |
| ar5523 | Atheros | no |
| at76c50x-usb | Atmel | no |
| ath5k | Atheros | yes |
| ath6kl | Atheros | no |
| ath9k | Atheros | yes |
| ath9k_htc | Atheros | yes |
| ath10k | Atheros | ? |
| atmel | Atmel | ? |
| b43 | Broadcom | yes |
| b43legacy | Broadcom | yes |
| brcmfmac | Broadcom | no |
| brcmsmac | Broadcom | yes |
| carl9170 | ZyDAS/Atheros | yes |
| cw1200 | ST-Ericsson | yes |
| hostap | Intersil/Conexant | ? |
| ipw2100 | Intel | no |
| ipw2200 | Intel | no |
| iwlegacy | Intel | no |
| iwlwifi | Intel | yes |
| libertas | Marvell | no |
| libertas_tf | Marvell | yes |
| mac80211_hwsim | Jouni | yes |
| mwifiex | Marvell | yes |
| mwl8k | Marvell | yes |
| orinoco | Agere/Intersil/Symbol | no |
| p54pci | Intersil/Conexant | yes |
| p54spi | Conexant/ST-NXP | yes |
| p54usb | Intersil/Conexant | yes |
| rndis_wlan | Broadcom | no |
| rt61pci | Ralink | yes |
| rt73usb | Ralink | yes |
| rt2400pci | Ralink | yes |
| rt2500pci | Ralink | yes |
| rt2500usb | Ralink | yes |
| rt2800pci | Ralink | yes |
| rt2800usb | Ralink | yes |
| vt6656 | VIA | yes |
| wil6210 | Atheros | yes |
| wl12xx | Texas Instruments | yes |
| zd1211rw | ZyDAS/Atheros | yes |
3. Find out current driver running on your wifi adapter by running below command:
ethtool -i wlan0 | grep driver
If need, install ethtool from Ubuntu Software Center. The command outputs something like this:
driver: wl0
So in my case I need to switch wireless driver from wl0 to brcmsmac to get AP mode support.
4. Install brcmsmac driver.
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer
5. After installed the new driver, try to enable it from Additional Drivers utility (search & open it from the Unity Dash), and finally restart.
6. Finally run:
iw list
Below section tells you AP mode is support now:
Supported interface modes:
* IBSS
* managed
* AP
* AP/VLAN
* monitor
For some wireless chips, run below command instead to check out supported interface modes:
sudo iwconfig wlan0 mode master
7 To make this work at next boot, go to /etc/modprobe.d directory in terminal:
cd /etc/modprobe.d/ && ls
Or in your file browser (open as root), find out and remove the line blacklist brcmsmac that blacklist the driver in any file in that directory.
