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By Kahless at 2005-07-17 05:41
ok, first of all, this is specific to slackware 10.1, but will *probably* work on other versions of slackware, and other distros should install in a similar way. If your using another distro, you might have better luck with the official documentation, as I did a few hackish things to make it work with slack.


Why? Because Wifi-radar has a nice interface for finding wireless AP's

What you need:
wifi-radar
Python
pygtk2

// a note about my formatting. anything behind these // is extra info.
// anything in front of the # is a command that you will enter in a terminal

Ok, the first step is to go get everything. For simplicitys sake, lets do everything as root, ok?
make a directory to keep yourself organized, and change to that directory.

#mkdir wireless
#cd wireless


Now, we need to grab some files. When the file name changes, you'll have to go find them manually, but for now ill give you console commands to grab them. the three packages above are links to where you can get them now, so get them from there if these links break.

# wget http://www.bitbuilder.com/wifi_radar/bins/wifi-radar-1.9.4.tar.gz
# wget ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-current/slackware/d/pyth...
# wget http://ftp.gnome.org/pub/GNOME/sources/pygtk/2.4/pygtk-2.4.1.tar.gz


// If you cant get the files this way, go to the packages web sites and find them.
// We are using the tarred package for wifi-radar from http://www.bitbuilder.com/wifi_radar/ . // The second file is from slackware.com's package page, and the third is plain old source
// code downloaded from http://www.pygtk.org/


ok... so now we have all of the files we need, right? The first thing we are going to do is install python. this is an easy one... fire up packagetool....

# pkgtool

and select the first option: Current: Install Packages from Current Directory.
It will sit there looking dumb for a minute... then it will ask you if you want to install python. Tell it yes, and it will sit there looking dumb a bit longer, until it drops you back to a console. Python is now installed ;)


Next we are going to install pygtk. Pay attention, this is the part that made me want to execute sheep or something...... We start by untarring the directory

# tar zxvf pygtk-2.4.1.tar.gz

Now we will have a new directory called pygtk-2.4.1. Lets jump in :)

# cd pygtk-2.4.1

The next three steps are to configure, make, and make install the package. It is VERY important not to leave out the extra parameter to make, or instead of working, the program will cry that it cant find a gtk module, and you too will pull your hair out :)

# ./configure --prefix=/usr
# make
# make install

Lots of gibberish will fill your screen after each of these commands, and when you are back to your console after the make install, you will now have pygtk installed :)

// note 1: on other distros, you might not need --prefix=/user. This was a fix for slackware.
// You also might not need this if you installed python from source downloaded from the python
// homepage, but I saw no need to test that since a package is available

// note 2: if you are on dialup (you poor suffering soul) you can get the python package
// off the slack cd, i just find it more convenient to dl it from the net than dig for a cd :)


Now we are going to tie it up, by installing the actual Wifi Radar app itself. This is a big more manual....

# tar zxvf wifi-radar-1.9.4.tar.gz
# cd wifi-radar-1.9.4
# mkdir /etc/wifi-radar/
# mv wifi-radar.conf /etc/wifi-radar/wifi-radar.conf
# mv wifi-radar /sbin/wifi-radar
# chmod +x /sbin/wifi-radar
# mv wifi-radar.sh /usr/bin/
# chmod +x /usr/bin/wifi-radar.sh
# mv wifi-radar.svg /usr/share/pixmaps
# mv wifi-radar.png /usr/share/pixmaps

Now we need to make two very minor changes, but if we don't, nothing will work :p
I prefer VI, but feel free to use whatever editor you want. The first change is to tell the config file what your network interface is. Mine is wlan0, but if yours is different, you will NEED to substitute wlan0 for whatever yours is!!!!

# vi /etc/wifi-radar/wifi-radar.conf

Find the line that says:
Interface = eth2
and change it to
Interface = wlan0
Or whatever your interface is :P

Save the file. In vi, you can make the change by putting the cursor over the e in eth2, hitting shift+R, and typing wlan0. Then, hit escape, and exit vi by typing :wq {enter}
Again, if vi makes you suicidal, feel free to use your preferred editor.


Now we have everything installed, and the config file edited. One minor problem: the program is going to look in the wrong place for the file, because in slackware, the correct directory didn't exist, and my directory name just makes more sense :) to fix it, we do this:

# vi /sbin/wifi-radar

This might scare you a bit, but its not bad. We are only editing one line, line 29 to be exact. You can skip there in vi by typing
29G
yes, the G must be capital. Or, you can use your text editors search feature, and search for conf.d/

this is the line:
CONF_FILE = "/etc/conf.d/wifi-radar.conf"
Remember how you changed the other file? do the same thing to chance this line to read this:
CONF_FILE = "/etc/wifi-radar/wifi-radar.conf"


Now, if you are logged into X as root, you can run the command wifi-radar in a new console, and it will launch! Hooray! If I were a drinker, i would take a break for beer... but I'm not, so lets move on. If running the program as root is sufficient for you, you can stop here :)


If you want to run the program as a regular user, you need sudo. hey, this is more work......
again, I'm getting the sudo package from the slackware package page.... Some of you can skip some of these steps... you know who you are.

# wget ftp://ftp.slackware.com/pub/slackware/slackware-current/slackware/ap/sud...
# pkgtool

This time, say no to Python, (its gonna ask because your still in that directory, remember)... and say yes to the sudo package. when your back at your #, its installed

Edit the sudoers file:
# vi /etc/sudoers
add the following line to the end of the file, using your username in place of kahless.
kahless ALL=/usr/bin/wifi-radar.sh


Edit the sudo script:
vi /usr/bin/wifi-radar.sh
edit the line that starts with sudo, removing the word "usr." the edited line should say:
sudo /sbin/wifi-radar $*


guess what..... your finally done!

log in as a regular user, and run the command:
# sudo wifi-radar.sh

It will load! w00t!


This was my first tutorial, I'm pretty sure I didn't miss anything, and my ways may be a bit convoluted, but hopefully it was worth our time, and your rockin a great new wireless tool :)



--Kahless

by Kropotkin on Mon, 2005-08-01 14:54
Thanks bringing this program to our attention. Your tutorial inspired me to install Wifi-radar on my laptop running Fedora 4 and it is quite useful.

by Diademed on Thu, 2005-08-25 11:42
Are there any non-GUI AP scanners? i.e. one that looks attractive from a terminal? I do not intend to install a GUI on my box.

by nismoman on Tue, 2005-10-04 13:53
I tried the install on suse 9.2 with the KDE desktop, I went to the console and when I run
./configure --prefix=/usr

at the end it tels me it can't find atk.pc (ie. the atk package and not the gtk one)

is there some other package I need to install.
I've been messing with this off and on for a couple of days now and can't seem to get it.

by Allanitto Newbee on Tue, 2007-10-16 10:55
Hi,

I tried to install wifi-radar according to procedure but when I was compiling "make" I had an error and I don't remember what it is. Also in doing "makefile" I think the same error occured. make and makefile ran for a while and I think when it was almost finish or almost at the end some error message occured. Do you have any idea or did ever encountered any problem the first time you tried to build it?

please let me know. I really want to have this wifi-radar running on my Slackware 12.


Thanks

by nismoman on Tue, 2007-10-16 14:53
First of all, it would help to have the actual error message you saw, it could many things.

Also the guide to installing Wi-Fi Radar in slackware is pretty dated (2005 in slack 10). You're best best is to try "googling" around the web for more up to date articles or discussions. I haven't tried Wi Fi Radar my self in quite a while, but I'm sure there are plenty of resources out there if you search.

I ran a quick google for "wifi radar slackware 12" and found a few links:

Podcast (looked promising enough)
http://thelip.net/?p=64

Also there are alternatives like knetworkmanager which have been improved since the original thread was posted.

Hope that helps. I guess it's better than no reply.


  



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