OK, so here's the basis of my problem... I'm an idiot... let me explain...

I have a Dell E1505 and it has a ipw3945 wireless card. I want to use the laptop primarily for wireless network security purposes (checking my network for vulnerabilities) and need monitor mode for kismet to work.

I wish I had the funds to buy another wireless card (prism or orinoco) but I just don't, and I don't think I should have to seeing as I can install the drivers from ipw3945.sf.net and set monitor mode. The only problem, I'm not that adept with Linux and especially not building modules and drivers and such from source. I have gotten wireless working with RPMs and Ndiswrapper, but both solutions don't allow monitor mode.

So here's what I've done;
-Tried Suse 10.2, Fedora Core 6, Gentoo, Ubuntu, Kubuntu, and numerous live CDs to see if native compatibility was for IPW3945, and if I could easily rebuild for monitor mode... no luck
-Tried Ndiswrapper, and got it working, but it doesn't support monitor mode...
-I copy the files for the daemon and firmware
-I generally then have to outcomes when trying to make the IPW3945 drivers.
--The make runs flawlessly (happened once in Fedora 6 I think) and then I cannot get any output in lsmod, iwconfig, or ifconfig... obviously this doesn't help
--The make errors out stating Error 2 and prompts to rebuild IEEE80211. Upon attempting to rebuild IEEE then I attempt to remove-old and make, and it then cannot find files and errors out.

I know that's kinda vague, but I'm using the latest versions of IPW drivers, firmware, and daemon; and I just keep getting these errors no matter the distro or how much I attempt to fix it.

So, my question is: Does anyone have an idea of what I'm doing wrong? I'll try to get the actual outputs within the day, but I was just hoping someone could give me a little guidance. I've spent upwards of 30 hours installing, uninstalling, reinstalling, modifying, and researching for possible solutions and I just really need some help...

Thanks so much for reading, sorry that was so long, and any help is greatly appreciated...

I've got the same card and it's working flawlessly with the driver from ipw3945.sf.net, but so far I haven't needed the monitor mode. To be more precise, I used the ebuilds available in Gentoo (which automatically build everything from source) marked as stable (ipw3945 1.05, ipw3945-ucode 1.13, ipw3945d 1.7.18).

According to the documentation (README.ipw3945), monitor mode is enabled but not supported (release 1.0.5), so this could explain why it doesn't work with the pre-compiled modules you tried. As far as I can see you've got two options:

1) Get the latest and greatest pre-compiled packages (e.g. at rpmfind.net) and try "modprobe ip23945 mode=2" (I guess you already found that option in README.ipw3945).

2) Try building from source again.

It's a bit tricky because apparently you need to have a kernel with IEEE 802.11 support disabled and use the stack from http://ieee80211.sourceforge.net (I'm using version 1.1.13, again from Gentoo). Which probably means you have to compile the kernel yourself. This is not too hard and there are many guides and HOWTOS available, for example here (but you might want to grab one specific to your current distribution). However this usually does take some hours the first time you do it. When configuring the kernel, make sure you disable Networking -> Generic IEEE 802.11 Networking Stack (CONFIG_IEEE80211), but enable wireless extensions at Device Drivers -> Network device support -> Wireless LAN drivers [...] (CONFIG_NET_RADIO).

Next, install the ieee80211 package I mentioned above. There's an INSTALL document provieded in the tarball, but it's also described in the ipw3945 INSTALL file.

Finally, unpack the ipw3945 stuff and edit the Makefile of the main package. Make sure there's a line reading and it's not commented out. Install everything as per INSTALL file in the same package.

Theoretically, you have now got a driver with monitor support, so when doing the ./load step mentioned in the INSTALL file you can specify the mode option:
If this works, you'll want to add a line
to /etc/modprobe.conf. Beware that this file is usually auto-generated; there should be instructions at the top of it detailing where to put that line and how to regenerate the file.

I hope this helps you figure it out, but feel free to post back if you encounter problems.

Alright, I'll give that a try... we'll see how it goes. I'm attempting to build for Fedora 6 (the great thing about this, I only had to try about 20 distros before I found one I liked) so I'll find some vanilla kernels for it and try that and report back.

Thanks again for the help