HostAPD and isc-dhcp-server ARP tables not working, no network access

Question

I have a raspberry pi that I am setting up as a router to an open network. The raspberry pi is connected via ethernet cable to my real router (on a different WiFi network) and I am using hostapd and isc-dhcp-server for the AP and DHCP. I have pretty much followed the exact instructions on the website http://raspberrypihq.com/how-to-turn-a-raspberry-pi-into-a-wifi-router/. The only difference in result is that my ARP tables on the machine connecting to it can't get the MAC address of the raspberry pi, and the raspberry pi can't figure out the MAC address of the computer connecting to it. The result is that the computer connecting to it has no internet, and also (though I believe this problem is unrelated) it takes an extremely long time to connect to the AP, and it doesn't always work. I will be happy to offer you any files that you need (such as /etc/network/interfaces, /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf, etc.), although they should be the same as what is on the website, because those are the instructions I followed.

Answer 1

Ok, I figured out what was wrong. I can't be sure exactly now that I deleted everything that was wrong, but basically I removed some excess stuff that was breaking it from the /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf file. Here are a few things I removed, any of which could have been the culprit:

ctrl_interface=wlan0 # This is actually supposed to be /var/run/hostapd, but that didn't exist on my system so I just took this line out
bridge=br0 # br0 does not exist.
macaddr_acl=0 # I don't know what this does, but it didn't seem necessary.