Making Kismet configurable from within Knoppix

[deeBs]

Hi there,

First of all a big thankyou to Klaus Knopper and colleagues for a great Linux live CD. I'm very impressed with it, and I make every attempt to give copies to my friends, to help convert them to Linux.

Another useful-looking piece of software is Kismet (http://www.kismetwireless.net) , which is a WiFi packet sniffer for Linux. To my surprise and delight I found that Kismet is included on the Knoppix CD, albeit that it doesn't have a menu option - you have to invoke it from the command line. So with Knoppix you can turn any laptop into a handy WiFi packet sniffing tool!

On Knoppix v3.3, Kismet worked straight 'out of the box' (when logged-in as root). However, on Knoppix v3.6 (which contains a later version of Kismet with some extra features I would like to use), Kismet doesn't work (for me). It turns out that on v3.3, the Kismet config file expects to see a Lucent/ Orinoco WiFi card (which I happen, by sheer luck, to have), whereas on Knoppix v3.6 it expects to see a Cisco WiFi card (which I don't have).

So to change between one card and another, it is necessary to modify the configuration file (kismet.conf). However, this is stored in the read-only Knoppix filesystem (i.e. on the CD), with a link at /etc/kismet/kismet.conf, which *is* writeable (on RAMDISK, I suppose). So the hack around this problem is either to copy the config file into the above directory (overwriting the link), or else to copy the config file to somewhere else, and to replace the link to the new target directory.

So perhaps to make Knoppix a little more configurable in the first place, it might be a good idea to put the Kismet config files directly in some writeable file system. This would probably be a good idea for other similar applications too. I understand that other considerations may mean that this isn't such a good idea. However, I just thought I'd make the suggestion, for what it's worth.

Cheers,

deeBs

[probono]

My solution is to copy all configuration files to a self-made writable etc directory and having knoppix.sh copy the files inside that directory over the real /etc at each boot. This way, Knoppix is totally configurable.

[BillS]

I find this an interesting topic. The reason is that I can't get Kismet to run (from either hard disk nor CD). I am working on a Dell Latitude 610. I mean that it runs, but dies off because it can't set the monitor on the wifi card. This is passingly odd, since both cards (Orinoco Classic Gold PC and Linksys WPC11v3) work with Kismet on another Latitude 600 with Knoppix 3.4 installed (runninmg 2.4.x kernel)..

I have spent the day sofar trying to figure out the differences. I have never built a Linux kernel, much less patched a device driver. I don't really know what I did to get it running under 3.4. It didn't work at first, but after a while, and a few upgrades amd whatnot, it was working....

So, now even trying from the CD , both kernels, it still does not display the monitor ioctl with iwpriv. But I did notice the 13e driver in 2.6 and a 15rc?? in the 2.4 kernel. But no noticable capability differences..


BillS