Problem starting my piratebox- It's running but not "broadcasting"

First of all I'm relatively new. I've liked the concept of piratebox forever but this is my first time trying to install it for myself.

I think it's a problem with dnsmasq but I'm not totally sure. I've installed piratebox, but I always get a fail message for dnsmasq. I'll start it manually, nothing changes. I stop piratebox, try to start it again, same thing. I go to localhost and everything is alright, it's just not "broadcasting" the signal for others to connect to, it's just running locally. If I'm not mistaken this is because dnsmasq isn't starting, right?

Also, how do I edit the SSID name? I read it's located /etc/config/wireless but I'm not seeing it anywhere.

For reverence, running on Mint 17.3 on my laptop. (Just trying to test it out before I put it on a dedicated system just for piratebox)

Quote

I think it's a problem with dnsmasq but I'm not totally sure. I've installed piratebox, but I always get a fail message for dnsmasq. I'll start it manually, nothing changes.

Which error message do you get?
Did you disable & stop the default installation of the daemon?
dnsmasq is responsible for giving away DHCP requests and faking DNS answers.

Quote

Also, how do I edit the SSID name? I read it's located /etc/config/wireless but I'm not seeing it anywhere.

On a normal laptop installation, everything is configured in /opt/piratebox/conf , this particular configuration is in /opt/piratebox/conf/hostap.conf

best regards
Matthias

Oh alright. I'll check hostap.

As for the error, I don't believe it was giving any specific error. For example, I would run:

sudo service piratebox start

Which would then display
dnsmasq [FAIL]
lighttpd [ok]
droopy [ok]

I would then initialize dnsmasq with the same command above, it would start without problems.

Then when I use

sudo service piratebox stop

I believe it was the same issue. Everything would stop, except dnsmasq would say [FAIL] next to it again.

Then when I try to stop dnsmasq specifically, it would say that it's not running.

Matthias Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Did you disable & stop the default installation of
> the daemon?

> best regards
> Matthias


Sorry, again, I'm completely new to actually setting up a piratebox on anything. You mean "disable & stop the default installation of the daemon" by stopping and restarting it? If so I have tried that many times and even tried a re-install. I followed all the commands on the guide for laptop installations as closely as I could (without doing any of the optional customizing commands). In either case, it still doesn't broadcast the signal. I wonder, is there some extra step I have to do for a laptop for it to broadcast?

Is it possible that my hardware simply doesn't support it?

Hi,
the easiest way to check what is wrong, is to manually kick off the piratebox start.

first run

sudo service piratebox stop

then

sudo /opt/piratebox/init.d/piratebox_alt start

Watch out of error messages around dnsmasq and post them here

If you see the error message "already in use", the another instance of dnsmasq is running. Then try the following steps:

sudo /opt/piratebox/init.d/piratebox_alt stop
sudo service dnsmasq stop 
sudo service dnsmasq disable
sudo service piratebox start

best regards
Matthias