# cisco AIR-PCM352 in monitor mode?

## m4chine

I've done some looking around, and it looks like the pcmcia drivers being shipped with the kernel, and cisco's drivers dont allow the aironet pcm350 series to be put into monitor mode (rfmon). However, the sf project drivers at http://sourceforge.net/projects/airo-linux support monitor mode. The install directions werent clear, it said , copy the files over to your source tree if you are using pcmcia-cs, did that, then it says to recompile all. So I did 'make modules modules_install'. Not sure if this was correct or not, but probably not because it didnt work. Any help in getting my pcm-352 cisco card into monitor mode would be greatly appreciated. thanks!

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## Smoke2firE

what does the new module you made say when its loaded did you run depmod after redoing the modules?

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## m4chine

Yes i ran 'depmod -a' after making and installing the modules. The card works, but i still cant put it in monitor mode. here is some output.

```
centrino kernel # modinfo airo_cs

filename:    /lib/modules/2.4.22-ck2/pcmcia/airo_cs.o

description: "Support for Cisco/Aironet 802.11 wireless ethernet cards.  This is the module that links the PCMCIA card with the airo module."

author:      "Benjamin Reed"

license:     "MPL"

parm:        irq_mask int

parm:        irq_list int array (min = 1, max = 4)

```

so it would appear that this is the correct module, ben reed was the developer. maybe im not doing the right steps to put the card into monitor mode. i tried this first step, executed the script on the second, and both produced the same results in the aironet/Config file shown.

```
centrino kernel # iwconfig eth2 mode monitor

Error for wireless request "Set Mode" (8B06) :

SET failed on device eth2 ; Invalid argument.

centrino kernel # cat /home/sniped/scripts/rfmon.sh

#!/bin/bash

/usr/bin/clear

echo "enabling monitor mode..."

echo

/etc/init.d/net.eth2 stop

/sbin/ifconfig eth1 down

echo 'Mode: r' > /proc/driver/aironet/eth2/Config

/bin/sleep 3

echo 'Mode: y' > /proc/driver/aironet/eth2/Config

/bin/sleep 3

/sbin/ifconfig eth2 up

echo "ready to wardrive"

echo

centrino kernel # cat /proc/driver/aironet/eth2/Config

Mode: ESS

Radio: on

NodeName:

PowerMode: CAM

DataRates: 2 4 11 22 0 0 0 0

Channel: 6

XmitPower: 100

LongRetryLimit: 16

ShortRetryLimit: 16

RTSThreshold: 2312

TXMSDULifetime: 5000

RXMSDULifetime: 10000

TXDiversity: both

RXDiversity: both

FragThreshold: 2312

WEP: open

Modulation: error

```

any suggestions?

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## m4chine

also, how do you create the a 'wifiX' interface? i see a lot of fixes instructing you to use wifi0 or whatever, but i dont have that interface anywhere.

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## m4chine

help please?

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## michael-reilly

I am running the latest sourceforge driver since I need support for the new Aironet firmware.

This is what I see -

```

Status: CFG ACT SYN LNK PRIV KEY WEP 

Mode: 7bf

Signal Strength: 70

Signal Quality: 14

SSID: AhsunMiko

AP: AhsunMiko-AP340 

Freq: 0

BitRate: 11mbs

Driver Version: $Revision: 1.56 $

Device: 350 Series

Manufacturer: Cisco Systems

Firmware Version: 5.20.17

Radio type: 2

Country: 0

Hardware Version: 22

Software Version: 520

Software Subversion: 11

Boot block version: 150

```

ifconfig -a should show the wifi interface (along with all of the other interfaces) -

```

wifi0     Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-09-E8-B4-F1-8C-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00  

          BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:2312  Metric:1

          RX packets:10983 errors:820100 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:820100

          TX packets:7229 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:186 txqueuelen:100 

          RX bytes:8824077 (8.4 Mb)  TX bytes:706521 (689.9 Kb)

          Interrupt:3 Base address:0x100 

```

I've not tried rfmon mode.  It looks like one would use either 'r' (RXMODE_RFMON) or 'y' (RXMODE_RFMON_ANYBSS) but I do not know a lot about rfmon mode.

I'll try it over the weekend and let you know if I discover anything.

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## creep09

 *m4chine wrote:*   

> also, how do you create the a 'wifiX' interface? i see a lot of fixes instructing you to use wifi0 or whatever, but i dont have that interface anywhere.

 

Have you come up with a solution to your problem m4chine??? I'm having the exact same problem. Eventhough the activity led on my Cisco 350 seems to be working the right way (when there is an AP nearby it is continuously on) when I start AIRTRAF it doesn't scan anything. Almost the same shit happens when I try to run kismet.

I suspect my problem is also the existanse of eth1 instead of wifi0 on my wifi card..

I would appreciate any help...

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## m4chine

w00t! i finally resolved this issue with the cisco pcm350 cards, 1. not going into rfmon mode, 2. not having a wifiX interface, and 3. not working under kismet.

First i installed the newest 2.6 beta kernel. This took a little bit of fondling to get back to the point where i left my working 2.4 kernel, but wasnt too hard. Once i got pcmcia back up and working, i re-emerged the pcmcia-cs package. Now im not clear at this point if the pcmcia-cs package is even needed in the 2.6 kernels, i heard yes and no, but i know the cisco will work with it installed, so just re-emerge it  :Smile: . The new kernel gives the support i was looking for, a wifiX interface as well as a ethX interface, i believe all normal data transmission is performed on ethX and raw packets are examined through wifiX. From here, i emerged the masked kismet package kismet-3.0.1.ebuild. After emerging the new package, run etc-update and replace all the old kismet config files with the new ones, dont worry, its painless to modify the new configs. All that is left is to configure your /etc/kismet/kismet.conf. change the following...

```
suiduser=valid_username

source=ciscosource,ethX:wifiN,ciscosource
```

and leave the reset as default values. X and N wont neccesarily be the same numbers, to get the interfaces run 

```
iwconfig
```

 and that will  give you a printout.

Also a note, i got a wierd error 

```
FATAL: Dump file error: Unable to open dump file Kismet-Dec-19-2003-1.dump (Permission denied)
```

 and this was due to i was in the dir /root when i executed kismet. Kismet tried to create the log/dump dirs in /root but as the suiduser you specify, which obviously doesnt have permissions. simply cd /home/'suiduser' and rerun kismet and all should work. hope this helps.

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