Wireless Site Survey Software

kellinjar · 10-02-2006, 10:21 AM

Does anyone know of any wireless site survey software that exists for Linux? Either general software or one capable of performing a predictive site survey?

farslayer · 10-02-2006, 11:01 AM

kismet - readily available tool for sniffing out wireless connections, also available to run on your Linux handheld such as a Sharp Zaurus or possibly a ipaq running Linux.
http://www.kismetwireless.net/

Auditor Live CD - Lots of wireless tools on a bootable live CD (like knoppix)
http://www.remote-exploit.org/index.php/Auditor_mirrors

Also take a peek at http://www.linux-sec.net/Wireless/Sniffers/

jstephens84 · 10-02-2006, 11:39 AM

I use iwlist which comes with the installation of wireless tools.

kellinjar · 10-02-2006, 11:56 AM

iwlist doesnt' exactly offer an easy way to translate things in to RF maps.

Does Kismet do that? I got it running, but I didn't see anything in the help that would indicate how I could do that.

jstephens84 · 10-02-2006, 11:58 AM

If I am not mistaken kimset is like netstumbler.

farslayer · 10-02-2006, 12:14 PM

Refer to the Kismet documentation
http://www.kismetwireless.net/documentation.shtml

Quote:

7. Required Libraries & Utilities

Kismet is primary self-contained, however for some features it requires
some external libraries or utilities.

- GPSD (any version): http://russnelson.com/gpsd/
REQUIRED for GPS support

GPSD is a daemon which listens on a serial port for GPS data, parses it,
and makes it available via a TCP socket. Kismet can use a GPSD on the
local system, or if there is a wired ethernet connection available it can
use a GPS on a remote host.

The latest versions of GPSD fix compile issues which occurred on some
systems and it's highly reccomended you get the latest.

GPSDrive distributes an alternate version of GPSD, which should work with
Kismet.

- Imagemagick (5.4.7+): http://www.imagemagick.org/
REQUIRED for gpsmap map generation

Imagemagick is a graphics generation library which can read and write in
almost any format. Kismet requires a recent version of Imagemagick due
to IM's frequently changing API. If you do not plan to use gpsmap, you
can skip this library.

- Expat (1.95+): http://expat.sourceforge.net/
REQUIRED for gpsmap map generation

Expat is an XML processing library. Kismet requires this for parsing
netxml and gpsxml output logs. If you do not plan to use gpsmap, you can
skip this library.

Some versions of Expat included in distributions or other system
utilities (ie, XFree86-cvs) contain errors that make it impossible to
compile expat.h. Make sure you have the latest stable Expat version, and
remove offending duplicate headers if necessary.

- GMP: http://www.swox.com/gmp/
REQUIRED for gpsmap map generation

GMP is an arbitrary-precision math library. Kismet needs this for high
precision math functions when calculating graphics in gpsmap. If you
do not plan to use gpsmap, you can skip this.

kellinjar · 10-02-2006, 12:24 PM

Thanks farslayer. I saw that, but it didn't really give any information on how you set that up, capture the data, pass it on to the map program, etc. Do you happen to know if there is a tutorial anywhere for that?

farslayer · 10-02-2006, 02:06 PM

Sorry I'm not going to read all the docs for you, google is your friend.
Skim the docs for kismet, gkismet, and gpsmaps what you need is all there.
Google search kismet gpsmaps

There is TONS of information out there on the Internet about using Kismet for wardriving.

Theres utilities like gpsmap (Which is part of kismet and will be installed when you install Kismet) for creating maps locally, theres utilities for putting the map data on google maps, etc.. etc..
http://www.die.net/doc/linux/man/man1/gpsmap.1.html

kellinjar · 10-02-2006, 02:38 PM

I didn't ask you to read all the docs for me. I asked you if you were aware of a tutorial for setting up kismet to make an RF map as the site really just mentions its possible and doesn't really describe how to do it. I've found many good tutorials that way and usually the same tutorials seem buried deep within google if I happen to get the right keywords at all. If you didn't have one, thats all you had to say.