I am currently using Slackware 9.1 on a Compaq Armada 3500 laptop (366mhz) and have a Compaq PCMCIA 802.11b wireless adaptor working with the orinoco_cs driver, patched and all that good stuff.

When I run kismet or airsnort, it works perfectly monitoring the various networks that I "stumble" upon. When I remove it and put it back it, it's out of monitoring mode and connects to a network if there's one that's strong enough nearby.

But now, how can I manually connect to an AP of my choosing? Yesterday I was at school and we setup a WAP to see how long it'd take to crack wep, and then there's also the school's own wireless network. Just for fun, I was going to try to connect to that WAP's network, but when I removed my card and reinserted it, the software/card defaulted to the school's network, which is fine and dandy, 'cept I wanted to be on the test WAP's network!

So how can I go about manually assigning a network for the WNIC to connect to?

I searched the forums but have only found posts about drivers and trying to get a certain card to work, or how to setup a linux-based AP.


Also, is there an X tool that shows the available networks and then allows you to select one and it'll automatically connect you to it?? (it's a stretch, I know)



Thanks

Robert

Does this card respond to iwconfig commands at the console? If so, then that is your tool as that is where any gui tool is eventually going to send it's stuff anyway. A "man iwconfig" will show you all the options. If the card uses some other program to get it setup, then disregard.

it does respond to some of the iwconfig settings, but which ones should I be setting to assign myself to an ap?

I'm fairly new to wireless and changing the ESSID didn't seem to do much...or maybe I didn't give it time to react ?


So I guess my question is then: If I can search out a network using kismet, how would I go about connecting to it?

I'm not familiar with kismet, but at the very least it seems to me a tool like that would return a channel/frequency and an essid name, so to connect using just that info the command would look like this: iwconfig wlan0 channel x (or freq x.xxxg) essid essid_name, if the name contains whitespace then wrap in quotes. wlan0 is the device name of your wireless device, could be also eth0 or eth1 etc. To be associated with a particular access point does not necessarily give you a valid ip address on that network, you would assign that using ifconfig, something like ifconfig wlan0 xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, or use a dhcp client, for instance: dhcpcd wlan0, of course for those to work you would need to see info returned by iwconfig indicating that you're associated with the access point, your log would most likely show the association process and it's eventual success/failure as well.

ahhh thank you aKaBeaVis :P

so mainly, just setting the channel, essid, and then establishing an ip.


Thanks!