Alfa AWUS036NH setup in BackTrack
 

Hi all,

I'm fairly new to BackTrack, and Linux in general so please be patient with me... :) I'll try to be as thorough as i can.

I have set up BackTrack 5 R3 on my laptop hdd, which is partitioned with windows 7. I did have this set up previously in vmware on win7, but suffered a fatal error when first attempting this partitioned installation on the hdd, losing everything... and I mean everything! but just about back on track now.

So, what it is is today I have installed my new Alfa AWUS036NH wireless adapter, and it is up and running but I think it is not set up correctly, for 2 reasons; 1) in the wicd net. manager all reception bars are at 2 amber bars only, and this does not change to green even when right next to my own router. It also still only picks up my own router and the router in the apartment above me which is what my laptop picks up anyway, but this could just be the fact that there are only the 2 routers in this building and next door are some distance away, on both sides.
2) When I type iwconfig I get "no wireless extensions" show up in the result.

My method of install was to connect the wireless card and run:
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get install firmware-ralink

this got the card to see available networks, there was an error which I cant remember now. But, I decided to also extract the 2 .tar.bz2 folders that came with the device, and ran the install.sh, which completed successfully.

I will run a few commands that I have picked up along the way, and I am hoping someone can tell me if it is doing what it should, or can tell me a way I can check to make sure it is working the way it should, and if it isn't, how to fix it... e.g. the poor reception bars in wicd, and the "no wireless extensions" issue.

Thanks :)

P.S. My apologies for the copy and pasting effort, it kept saying I had included 12 images! :-S so I split everything up and I think it might have got a bit messed up!

terminal output
 

root@bt:~# ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 10:1f:74:cd:a3:**
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
Interrupt:41 Base address:0x6000

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:3102 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:3102 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:953253 (953.2 KB) TX bytes:953253 (953.2 KB)

mon0 Link encap:UNSPEC HWaddr 60-D8-19-64-8B-80-30-30-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00
UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING PROMISC ALLMULTI MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:216253 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:51319886 (51.3 MB) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wlan0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 60:d8:19:64:**:**
inet addr:192.168.1.104 Bcast:192.168.1.*** Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::62d8:19ff:fe64:8b80/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:26656 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:7929 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:16566955 (16.5 MB) TX bytes:887707 (887.7 KB)


root@bt:~# airmon-ng


Interface Chipset Driver

mon0 Unknown brcmsmac - [phy0]
wlan1 Ralink RT2870/3070 rt2800usb - [phy1]
wlan0 Unknown brcmsmac - [phy0]





.

terminal output 2
 

root@bt:~# airmon-ng start wlan0


Found 5 processes that could cause trouble.
If airodump-ng, aireplay-ng or airtun-ng stops working after
a short period of time, you may want to kill (some of) them!

PID Name
1538 dhclient3
1595 dhclient3
3094 wpa_supplicant
3100 dhclient
3120 dhclient
Process with PID 1595 (dhclient3) is running on interface wlan0
Process with PID 3094 (wpa_supplicant) is running on interface wlan0
Process with PID 3120 (dhclient) is running on interface wlan0


Interface Chipset Driver

mon0 Unknown brcmsmac - [phy0]
wlan1 Ralink RT2870/3070 rt2800usb - [phy1]
wlan0 Unknown brcmsmac - [phy0]
(monitor mode enabled on mon1)

no wireless extensions
 

root@bt:~# iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.

mon0 IEEE 802.11bgn Mode:Monitor Frequency:2.437 GHz Tx-Power=19 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Power Management:on

no wireless extensions 2
 

wlan1 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:off/any
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=20 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:on

no wireless extensions cont.
 

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bgn ESSID:"BTHomeHub2"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: 00:8B:5D:**:**:**
Bit Rate=1 Mb/s Tx-Power=19 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off
Encryption key:off
Power Management:off
Link Quality=30/70 Signal level=-80 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:1 Invalid misc:12 Missed beacon:0

eth0 no wireless extensions.