RPi4B for routing without WiFi ... safe to disable wpad?

[darksky]

I am using a RPi4B for routing only. WiFi is provided by a separate dumb AP. When looking at a list of running processes on the RPi4B, I am wondering why wpa_supplicant is running at all. Same question about hostapd.

ps output for context

# ps | grep wpa
 1183 root      2560 S    {hostapd} /sbin/ujail -n hostapd -U network -G network -C /etc/capabilities/wpad.json -c -- /usr/sbin/hostapd -s -g /var/run/hostapd/global
 1184 root      2560 S    {wpa_supplicant} /sbin/ujail -n wpa_supplicant -U network -G network -C /etc/capabilities/wpad.json -c -- /usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -n -s -g /var/run/wpa_supplicant/global
 1187 network   5088 S    /usr/sbin/wpa_supplicant -n -s -g /var/run/wpa_supplicant/global

In grepping for "wpa", it seems that /etc/init.d/wpad is starting these. Given my setup, is it safe to disable this daemon?

[jow]

Yes, it is safe to disable it.

[Barney]

@darksky

I am using a RPi4B for routing only

I suggest to disable wifi and bt hardware capabilities on the RPI4B. Just insert the following lines in your /boot/config.txt:

dtoverlay=disable-bt
dtoverlay=disable-wifi

As a consequence OpenWRT won't start any wifi related software.

And as a bonus: you save energy (about 0.2 - 0.3 W)

[darksky]

Good suggestion, @Barney. Currently, bluetooth comes disabled, but throwing in the wifi overlay is a good idea.

For reference:

# cat /boot/distroconfig.txt 
################################################################################
# Bootloader configuration - distroconfig.txt
################################################################################

# Restore PL011 (ttyAMA0) to GPIOs 14 & 15, instead of Mini UART (ttyS0).
# Mini UART is disabled by default unless "enable_uart=1" is specified,
#  which changes the core frequency to a fixed value and impacts performance.
# See https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/uart.md
[pi0w]
dtoverlay=disable-bt
[pi3]
dtoverlay=disable-bt
[pi4]
dtoverlay=disable-bt