So I'm not out to hack anything, just sniff the air and see who and what is out there. I had a stable rig setup with Windows + Netstumbler + Orinoco wireless card + home built cantenna. Life was good. But I was curious about the other side (the dark side?). How would a Linux + Kismet setup do? Linux, with the right drivers, allows the wireless card to go into a monitor mode where the card just listens to what ever is in the air. Unlike Netstumbler, which constantly has to keep sending requests out, like "any access points out there?" So it was a quest of mine to persuade my HP Pavilion (the ze5185 flavor for those wondering)
I wasn't in the mood to swap out Windows XP for a Linux install on the notebook. There is Windows application development I use it for. A Linux live boot CD would be perfect. A USB thumb drive would probably be tons better, but the BIOS on the ze5185 doesn't see the thumb drive as something bootable (I tried Zip and HDD boot flavors on the thumb drive with no luck). I like the thumb drive approach because you can have a read/write system. Being stuck with the CD leaves you having to reset your changes you made every time you boot. A work around here is to put the changes on the thumb drive and write a script to copy them where they need to go. And probably a better solution is to let the live CD create a partition file on the hard disk, although I have yet to try this.
Next it was a matter of selecting the live CD. There's a lot to pick from out there. Knoppix has been around for quite some time now and I know it Just Works™. I've played with Knoppix S-T-D. It is very slick and boots up pretty darn quick. I opted not to go with it because I wasn't able to get any of my wireless adapters to work nor any of my GPS units. I came across the LiveCD List. From here I poked around and discovered Backtrack2. It supported one of the wireless cards I had so I gave it a whirl. It worked great with the Broadcom card, but there were still issues.
My immediate problem was the notebook would shut down with Backtrack2. After watching it, it appeared to be an over heat problem. The fans worked. Granted, I had taken apart this notebook 3 times now and have come up with 10 extra screws that didn't find homes. Windows XP had been stable and running a software temperature monitor, the notebook under XP ran just fine. Backtrack2 uses the v2.6 Linux kernel and has support for ACPI which monitors the health of the hardware. I found if I disabled this on boot, the notebook no longer shut down. When you pop the CD in and boot up, it pauses at a prompt for boot options. Here's what I plug in (nodhcp tells it to ignore finding an IP address on boot):
bt acpi=off nodhcp
The notebook boots up and then prompts for a user name and password (root and toor). Hopping into KDE is just a matter of issuing startx, which works on my notebook, but the screen isn't quite right. Enter in xconf and then startx and life is good.
Running Kismet is simply a matter of finding it in the menu. It simply works, which is awesome. No driver fiddling for me.
Next, I wanted to get GPS working. I have 3 GPS units. One is from Rand McNally's "1997 Street Finder" (I think that was the title). Another more recent one was from DeLorme's "2004 Street Atlas" (I think). And lastly, I have Microsoft's "2005 Street & Trips" and the GPS unit it came with (it is a Pharos GPS-360). I did a lot of reading on the 'net and people seem to have gotten the Pharos to work. It wouldn't under Backtrack2. After a lot of frustration, I popped in Knoppix v5 CD and v5.1 DVD versions and it worked under both of those. Crap, it's a driver problem. After a lot more frustration, I had plugged in my 1997 vintage GPS in while in Backtrack2. I had GPSD running, which is what Kismet uses to get its GPS data. I stared at the screen and after 30 seconds or so, GPSD decided to try a different baud rate. It keeps trying and a minute or so later, it latched onto the GPS! I tried it with the DeLorme unit and it worked there too. I haven't been able to get it to work with the Pharos one (yet). The GPS problems appear to be a combination of getting USB to work and having the right drivers and Linux kernel.
UPDATE: Backtrack2 and GPSD can talk to the Pharos GPS unit. Every time I tried before, GPSD would freak out and halt.
Once you get GPSD to work (and in theory, gpsdrive), start it up and then start Kismet. If life is good, the latitude and longitude will be displayed in Kismet. If not, check kismet.conf (/etc/kismet/kismet.conf in Backtrack2) and make sure GPS is enabled (from the looks of it, Kismet, by default in Backtrack2, is configured for GPS).
Next up was getting the thumb drive to work. USB would see it. But Backtrack2 doesn't appear to properly mount it until KDE sees it. So I hold off on plugging in the drive until after I'm in KDE. I plug it in, click OK, and then /mnt/sda1_removable works. From here, I run my scripts to start GPSD, gpsdrive, and Kismet.
I took it out the past few days and it works pretty good. The DeLorme unit, I think, is causing Kismet to fail to report the right GPS coordinates. Kismet keeps saying it lost connection with the GPS unit. I think this is because this unit is not feeding proper NMEA sentences back. I'll take the Pharos for a spin. I think it will do a bit better.