I have the madwifi driver and im trying to run kismet but i get this error

Server options: none
Client options: none
Starting server...
Waiting for server to start before startuing UI...
Will drop privs to qbann4 (1001) gid 0
No specific sources given to be enabled, all will be enabled.
Enabling channel hopping.
Enabling channel splitting.
Source 0 (atheros_source): Enabling monitor mode for madwifi_g source interface ath0 channel 6...
Source 0 (atheros_source): Opening madwifi_g source interface ath0...
Spawned channelc control process 4292
Dropped privs to qbann4 (1001) gid 0
Allowing clients to fetch WEP keys.
Logging networks to Kismet-Apr-21-2004-1.network
Logging networks in CSV format to Kismet-Apr-21-2004-1.csv
Logging networks in XML format to Kismet-Apr-21-2004-1.xml
Logging cryptographically weak packets to Kismet-Apr-21-2004-1.weak
Logging cisco product information to Kismet-Apr-21-2004-1.cisco
Logging gps coordinates to Kismet-Apr-21-2004-1.gps
Logging data to Kismet-Apr-21-2004-1.dump
Writing data files to disk every 300 seconds.
Mangling encrypted and fuzzy data packets.
Tracking probe responses and associating probe networks.
Reading AP manufacturer data and defaults from /usr/local/etc/ap_manuf
Reading client manufacturer data and defaults from /usr/local/etc/client_manuf
FATAL: Dump file error: Unable to open dump file Kismet-Apr-21-2004-1.dump (Permission denied)
Sending termination request to channel control child 4292...
WARNING: Sometimes cards don't always come out of monitor mode
cleanly. If your card is not fully working, you may need to
restart or reconfigure it for normal operation.
Waiting for channel control child 4292 to exit...
Kismet exiting.

does any one know the real source line for madwifi plz help ?

Looks like Kismet is erroring because it can't write to the log file: "(FATAL: Dump file error: Unable to open dump file Kismet-Apr-21-2004-1.dump (Permission denied)"

Try setting the user ID to your normal user account in kismet.conf:
suiduser=username

i tried my reguler user account it didnt work

The only other thing I can think of is that the interface has to be up. I can't remember the exact error. So, iwconfig ath0 up, then run kismet.

Still, I'd focus on the permissions message. Does running Kismet as root produce the same error?

I would say to try running kismet as root

>i tried my reguler user account it didnt work
Saying "it didn't work" is usually unhelpful, say exactly what happened, if it produced to same error as before then say "it produced the same error as before".

Set kismet to change to your normal userid and start it in your normal users home directly not in /root. You have to be the root user when you start it (unless you installed it suid root) but you have to be in a directory your normal user can write to.

well fixed thanks for the help anyways.