Kismet does not start

Ephracis · 03-25-2005, 08:05 PM

I have a working wlan and my card is a D-Link DWL-AG650. Everything is working and I thought I would try out Kismet. I have installed all the dependencies and kismet did compile fine. But I can't seem to start it, not even as root.

Code:

$ kismet      
Server options:  none
Client options:  none
Starting server...
Will drop privs to mezzymeat (1000) gid 100
No specific sources given to be enabled, all will be enabled.
Enabling channel hopping.
Enabling channel splitting.
Source 0 (D-Link_AG): Enabling monitor mode for madwifi_ag source interface wlan0 channel 6...
FATAL: Unable to find private ioctl 'get_mode'
Waiting for server to start before starting UI...

Also I get this error when trying to switch to monitor mode by using iwconfig:

Code:

$ iwconfig wlan0 mode Monitor
Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :
    SET failed on device wlan0 ; Invalid argument.

bulliver · 03-26-2005, 01:48 PM

Did you properly edit kismet.conf with your wireless card and the correct driver? It would appear your card does not support monitor mode. If you are using ndiswrapper or anything other than a native linux driver kismet will not work for you.

Also, I don't think this is your problem, but if you start kismet from say /root, when it drops privileges your regular user will not be able to write to that directory and kismet will crap out.

Half_Elf · 03-26-2005, 02:09 PM

some beta wireless drivers dont use iwconfig interface yet (my wlan-ng driver doesn't), that's why you get the "unsupported" error when you try to change mode using iwconfig. Usually you have some kind of developper tools to mess up with your card (at least my driver does have it), but if kismet doesnt know your card driver well, it wont be able to use it because it wont call the "developper tool" to change settings on your card.
Take a look to your kismet conf and to kismet documentation to make ure your card is supported by kismet. If it is not, you will probably have to wait a bit before using this.

Ephracis · 03-26-2005, 02:59 PM

Thanks for the replies.

I am using madwifi and ndiswrapper. Maybe I am not able to use kismet since the card does not seem to be supported natively by Linux.

It's a shame not enough hardware is supported in Linux, I miss how easy it was to get the stuff to work. Maybe it's time to try to do something about it.

Half_Elf · 03-26-2005, 03:16 PM

I really don't know if ndiswrapper is supported by kismet, but I would tend to believe it is not since it doesnt use a native driver. Refer to kismet documentation, maybe I am wrong.

And if you want to "do something about it" you could write some letters to your card vendor. Most unsupported hardware are like this because the makers never released any technical specifications about the card, so it is nearly impossible to make drivers. Usually the problem isn't Linux, but cards vendors that believe you should only use Windoze XP. Tell them how you feel about it, that might help.

bulliver · 03-26-2005, 03:24 PM

I can confirm, without a doubt, you cannot use monitor mode with ndiswrapper, so no, you cannot use kismet.