Hello everybody,

First of all, thanks in advance for your patience and help. I'm a novice Mikrotik user and at a complete loss.

For some reason I'm not able to get my cAP ax to register to CAPsMAN.

My setup consists of one CRS112-8P-4S and two cAP ax's. The CRS is used for switching only. It has CAPsMAN configured as far as I can tell. The CRS and cAP's are all reachable in the same IP subnet. I have rebooted the cAP's in CAP mode via de software option and by disconnecting POE and using te reset procedure. A gazillion times by now. No luck sofar. Ik did update the CRS and cAP's to the latest SW releases (7.15.3 (stable)).

I could use some help.

Thank you so much for your time.

Yes, I found out that I have to use "Wifi" instead of "CAPsMAN". However...in the "Remote CAP" tab, there still is a CAPsMAN option, that is why I mentioned CAPsMAN. I did also create a bunch of profiles.

I did a lot of searching and reading, to no avail I have to admit. I also came across this document https://help.mikrotik.com/docs/display/ ... i-Overview. That didn't help me, so I must be missing something obvious.

Thanks again for your help and patience.

Post your configs, both sides...
remove license and serial number

Thanks!

I removed serial number, didn't find a reference to license however.

The configs for both the cAP's are identical (except for MAC and serial of course). However....in de web interface one cAP has "Wifi" and "Wireguard" greyed out. So there sure seems to be a slight difference.

However....in de web interface one cAP has "Wifi" and "Wireguard" greyed out. So there sure seems to be a slight difference.

Do you have wifi-qcom package on that device ?
It's needed as of 7.13.

If it's not present, load that package, let it activate (reboot) and then reset the device again to caps mode.

Both cAP's have routeros (7.15.3) en wifi-qcom (7.15.3) installed and enabled
CRS has routeros (7.15.3) installed end enabled, wireless (7.15.3) is installed but DISabled

Looks like you are missing wifi interface setup on the CAP

Also this is weird on CAPsMAN
this shouldn't be there either

@neki
thanks, but I didn't want to change everything at the same time

@normis
ok...thanks for the swift reply.
1) CAPsMAN is (and was) enabled
2) I removed ALL my previous templates and created one new configuration template as you pointed out
3) I created a provisioning template based on the previous created single configuration template
4) I put both cAP's in CAP mode using the power down procedure (wait for green flickering, then wait for solid, then release reset button), but no radio's appear in my "radio" tab

so, for the question about what my issue is... I think my issue is that I can not get my cAP radio's to pop up in the CRS radio tab. There is IP connectivity between the CRS and cAP's because I'm able to ping between those devices within the same IP subnet.

do you see wifi interfaces on CAP itself?

@neki

Yes they do, but.....

On both cAP's is says "no connection to CAPsMAN" for both radio's. They are all four disabled. There is another little thing. On the cAP where "wifi" and "wireguard" are greyed out, there also is missing the wifi icons in the "Name" column. Also....both cAP's stopped transmitting their initial SSID's. I don't know when that happend, or should be happening.

@normis

The cAP's are directly connected to the CRS (using POE) with (for now) 2 meter cables. I followed the exact reset procedure about a million times...nothing in "Radios" or "Remote CAP" however

Sorry....mistake here

The CRS and cAP's are all reachable in the same IP subnet.

Reachable how? ...another thing is, that you have VLANs configured on CRS, but there are no VLANs on CAP? Counldn't that be the issue?

I really doubt that you could get "no connection to CAPsMAN" with config you posted, because the interface wasn't configured to be managed by CAPsMAN.

If you are lost in what you have already tried, it will be best to start over...

The CRS and cAP's are IP reachable. They discover the network and each other via LLDP, I can use HTTP for management, SSH for management and ICMP also. They have been updated from the internet. I would say that qualifies is IP reachable and IP connectivity capable.

As for the VLAN's you are correct that I only configured one VLAN on de cAP's. The only VLAN with IP connectivity for the moment, so I don't see why that would be an issue since there is IP connectivity all over the place.

Starting over? If I knew what I was doing, but I obviously don't. I will start with a configuration reset of the cAP's

If you use VLAN, your caps need to be able to use that same VLAN to reach CRS/capsman.

As I mentioned. cAP’s, CRS and my laptop are all reachable via the same IP subnet. All wired connected by the way and no routing required. Ik kan ping from any device to any other device. Just no CAPsMAN for some strange reason.

/interface wifi capsman
set ca-certificate=auto certificate=auto enabled=yes interfaces=br0

Did you try to use VLAN interface?

Since the CRS is Layer2 only, ik have no VLAN interfaces to use.
(EDIT: Sorry, my bad, I have one VLAN available, VLAN1 in which all management traffic is handled. I tried that also, no luck)

I configured a monitor port on the CRS so that I kan use Wireshark to have a look at traffic coming from and going to one of the cAP's. I see CAPWAP traffic originating from my CRS, and CAPWAP traffic originating from the cAP, but there seems to be no connection of any CAPWAP kind between the to. Wireshark report malformed packets, that could well be a Wireshark issue.

No clue what to do from here.

...its in your conifg? vlan interface named LAN ?

...its in your conifg? vlan interface named LAN ?

Code: Select all

/interface vlan
add interface=br0 name=LAN vlan-id=1

yes, sorry, you are spot on. Ik just tried that one also, it didn't do anything.

Do you see them in neighbor tab? Each other?

Did you try to set up exact IP of CAPsMAN on CAP? ...and not use discovery

[admin@MikroTik-Switch-1] > /interface/wifi/capsman/print
;;; failed to create CA certificate: name must be unique! (6)
enabled: yes
interfaces: LAN
ca-certificate: auto
certificate: auto
require-peer-certificate: no
package-path:
upgrade-policy: none
generated-ca-certificate: WiFi-CAPsMAN-CA-488F5A1606EA
generated-certificate: WiFi-CAPsMAN-488F5A1606EA


what? what kind of error is that? it clearly shows two generated certificates. What name is it referring to?

Clear certificates on controller.

Personally I don't use certificates for capsman.

Tried it without certificates. No cigar again. I'm getting to the point where I'm ready to throw my towel.

is there any existing CA cert?

Not anymore. But if I set CA-certificate to "auto" it will generate a new CA cert and a new cert. But with above error. I'm completely lost. It shouldn't be that difficult

What about storage space?

Pretty sure there is another CA cert already to find under /certificates. Just remove that one.

For some mysterious reason I can't explain, the cAp's and CAPsMAN have decided to join their forces. The "Remote CAP" shows now my two cAP's. It doesn't give me much confidence but it is what it is. Thanks you all for helping me.

Mikrotik should create a wifi Capsman troubleshooting guide. I am wondering what can possibly go wrong on setup Capsman. A lot. It was a near fluid experience for me, just a few months ago. I would not say as intuitive as using Unifi Network Server, but that's because of the Mikrotik philosophy. E.g. a Unifi AP is a dumb disc with flashing LED when you power it on first time. It stays dumb until you hit a provision button on the Unifi management software. A Mikrotik wireless device (even the ones named CAP as e.g. the CAP AC) on the other hand starts up and applys some default configuration and from this point on it can get dirty and tricky. Joining a cap manually with existing default configuration (or even quickset applied) is somehow a field of mines. You can cross it alive maybe with luck, likely as you win the lottery jackpot. You'd better find a safe way around it.

So two tips for first time configuration of a wifi Capsman setup:

1) setup a most simple wifi Capsman and ensure it is running
2) add/join caps only by resetting them to capsman-mode. That's either holding reset button for 5sec or use system configuration reset with caps-mode flag. On boot they now join automatically the first capsman they find on the network.