atheros wireless "monitor mode"

[Dan Farrell]

On Fri, 11 Apr 2008 19:06:10 -0400
steve <sfreilly at roadrunner.com> wrote:

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> Have been messing around with kismet, and wireshark, and seem to get
> an error
> "> FATAL: Failed to set monitor mode: Invalid argument.  This usually
> means your drivers either do not support monitor mode, or use a
> different mechanism for getting to it."
> 
> laptop has an atheros AR5BMB5 card built in, anyone know if the
> restricted module provides monitor mode? or is there some way to
> enable it?  any clue would be appreciated.  thanks.

I'm not sure what this 'restricted module' is; it might be the
Atheros-provided parts of the madwifi-ng packages, which are behind the
scenes driving your Atheros card most likely.  

If so, I have a lot of experience with them, and believe what you need
to do is to use wlanconfig to destroy your current wifi interface and
create a new one in managed mode.  Managed and Station mode, do not
appear to inter-operate, in contrast to what people sometimes say
online.  From http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/ChangingMode, 
  ifconfig ath0 down
  wlanconfig ath0 destroy
  wlanconfig ath0 create wlandev wifi0 mode
 
where mode = sta|adhoc|ap|monitor|wds|ahdemo 

But you might be using the new Athreos drivers.  I know nothing about
them.  I recommend the website, http://madwifi.org, very highly.  It is
more helpful than many project pages.
http://madwifi.org/wiki/UserDocs/ is a particularly relevant section.
No doubt the page can help you track down which driver you're using.