# Wireless orinoco scanning and monitoring not working

## braindead0

I'm trying to get my internal 802.11b nic (Windows reports LAN-Express IEEE 802.11 PCI Adapter, /proc/pci reports Harris which I believe would use the orinoco_cs drivers) on my Acer TM 240...

I'm running 2.6.3 kernel, and patched the Orinoco drivers (with the patch on Airsnort page).  I found I had to compile the Hermes chipset support into the kernel to get anywhere at all.  When I run iwpriv it lists 'monitor' so I think the patch was okay.

If I run AirSnort in scan mode, the 'active' light for my wireless flashes on and off..leading me to believe that it's scanning.  But, I know there is traffic on our test network, and yet AirSnort reports no traffic at all.  If I set it to monitor a specific chan, no light at all.  If I try "wlist eth1 scan" I get an error reporting interface doesn't support scan.

Everything else looks like it works for regular use, just can't get this scanning goin' on.

I've tried reading the tons of information on this, but getting nowhere as there seems to be way too many ways to setup your wireless card  :Wink: 

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## braindead0

Well, I discovered something else.. it aint working at all it seems.  The flashing light is probably when Airsnort send a reset, if I iwpriv eth1 reset the light flashes as well.

I have a known working WAP here (can connect with windoze okay), turns out that I cannot get connected at all.  Set the ESSID and the key and ifconfig eth1 up it doesn't go active.  I tried the wireless scripts on this thread with no luck there either.

It seems odd that I can reset the card, set configuration which leads me to believe that the drivers are good.. but nothing else...ugh.

Thanks for any help on this.

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## UberLord

Luckily the author of those scripts also has an orinoco based card patched with monitor and scan for 2.6.3 vanilla kernel.

First things first - my scripts rely on either the AP broadcasting the ESSID or the ESSID being set in the wireless_preferred section in /etc/conf.d/net

Secondly, sometimes WEP is the problem. Try connecting without WEP (assuming you control the AP). If that works, then reset the WEP. Don't use passphrases as they are unsupported by wireless-tools and therefore my scripts.

```
iwlist eth1 scan
```

 does work with the card - or mine at least. Try re emerging wireless-tools

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## braindead0

Thanks for the tips, I've setup the wireless script to use our AP by name and manually configured everything (KEY/AP/IP Addresses, etc).. 

Just emerged wireless tools - no change.

The only patch I applied to the drivers was orinoco-0.13e-patch.diff from http://airsnort.shmoo.com/orinocoinfo.html, perhaps there's another patch?  I wonder if I should simply retrieve the Orinoco drivers from CVS...

My card seems to only be recognized by orinoco_pci, hopefully that's not a problem.

Oh yeah, and I've tried compiling them into the kernel.. with no change.

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## UberLord

I use a different patch as that one only does monitoring and not scanning AFAIK. Below is the link

http://www.tzi.de/~plasmahh/

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## braindead0

Thanks, patching and compiling away  :Wink: 

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## UberLord

Postback if it works or not   :Surprised: 

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## braindead0

now iwlist eth1 scan returns "Failed to read scan data : Resource temporarily unavailable"  Might be due to our WAP not announcing it's address.  Perhaps I'll try at home and turn off WEP..see what happens.

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## UberLord

The interface needs to be UP before the scanning works

```

ifconfig eth1 up

iwlist eth1 scan

```

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## braindead0

Oh, well that seems better.. No scan results, but not unexpected.

Now if I can just get it to monitor, kismet running, thinks it's scanning but nothing.  Don't even get the flashing light when using AirSnort in scan mode.

One thing I noticed that seems odd, if I run dhcpcd eth1 I get "interface eth1 is not Ethernet or 802.2 Token Ring" 

Oh the joy of wireless on Linux....  :Wink: 

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## UberLord

 *braindead0 wrote:*   

> 
> 
> One thing I noticed that seems odd, if I run dhcpcd eth1 I get "interface eth1 is not Ethernet or 802.2 Token Ring" 

 

I don't get that.

Did you apply the patch to a vanilla and cleaned kernel or to your already patched and made version?

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## braindead0

I'm running "gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.3-r1", I removed the patch I got from AirSnort (by simply overwriting the sources with a backup pre-patch copy) then applied orinoco-0.13e-SN-4.diff (I presumed it included the -1,-2 and -3 version..ie: cumulative).. Rebuilt everything..etc..

I did notice some errors when patching (hermes.c I think), but it compiled just fine. 

The only vanilla sources I see in portage are 2.4.25?

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## UberLord

By vanilla I meant totally un-patched.

Like the development-sources ebuild.

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## braindead0

Then yes, Vanilla sources..totally unpatched...

Starting to get a feeling that this card is an oddball or something  :Wink: 

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## braindead0

The dev sources ebuild desciption says "including gentoo patchset for the 2.6 kernel tree", do I need to get the pre gentoo patchset driver source?

I tried re-doing everything (figuring I messed something up) when applying the patch I get conflicts on orinoco_cs.c (if I remember correctly), if I accept the default (-R) I get tons of nifty errors trying to compile... that probably explains a lot (I must have skipped applying those changes previously).

Just downloaded the driver source from http://ozlabs.org/people/dgibson/dldwd/orinoco-0.13e/

The patch applied with not problems on that code, so I overwrote the source files in /drivers/net/wireless with those and seems to build fine...  Perhaps that was the answer.

:EDIT: Ack, not the answer.  Now orinoco_pci doesn't seem to work at all, I re-emerged wireless-tools (just in case) and iwconfig doesn't see the card at all.  At least it saw it before, but OTOH it didn't work  :Wink: 

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## elegent

I'm trying to select a specific AP on my university wireless network, but I'm having issues listing the different AP's.  At one point, I got them, using the command 'iwlist scan'.  I try that command now, and I get this.

Also, I am currently using the WAG311 Netgear dual-band card with MadWiFi drivers.

```
eclipse root # iwlist scan

lo        Interface doesn't support scanning : Operation not supported

eth0      Interface doesn't support scanning : Operation not supported

ath0      Failed to read scan data : Resource temporarily unavailable
```

my ath0 is UP and active, and I'm using the connection right now. 

So I'm wondering if there is a way I can fix this so I can pull up all my AP's again and specify the one I want to use. 

The current one I'm using I only get a 24/94 link quality to, and there is one that I get 94/94 to and it won't connect to that one.  

Thanks

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## UberLord

 *elegent wrote:*   

> 
> 
> ```
> ath0      Failed to read scan data : Resource temporarily unavailable
> ```
> ...

 

Odd - you're the second person I know of with this error. Have you tried the current version of madwifi-driver in ~x86 portage?

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## elegent

Yes, I am using the latest ~x86 madwifi-drivers.   At one point, it listed ALL the access points, but now it gives me this error.  Any other ideas I can try to fix this so I can get the access point's mac address I need?

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## UberLord

 *elegent wrote:*   

> Yes, I am using the latest ~x86 madwifi-drivers.   At one point, it listed ALL the access points, but now it gives me this error.  Any other ideas I can try to fix this so I can get the access point's mac address I need?

 

Unfortunately not - the guy that had the error was able to work around it using the preferred_aps option in conf.d/wireless.

I have a WG311 card and the scanning option works fine using ~x86 madwifi drivers. The only thing I can suggest is trying a CVS version and/or bugging the madwifi developers

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