airodump's "Error setting monitor mode" on RTL8180

[vodoomoth]

Hi,
just a note for the people who may be in the position i've been in for a few days.
On my laptop, airodump used to throw the message "Error setting monitor mode on wlan0".
However, kismet runs fine, as well as aireplay and airsnort. From my point of view, there was no reason for that message.

So I downloaded the rtl8180-sa2400 driver, compiled and installed it. No change: I was still getting the same message.
Finally, I downloaded the aircrack source, and commented the monitor mode test section (lines 2793-2797 of airodump-ng.c). This time, after compile and install, the app would run normally, displaying the available networks and doing all the things it was supposed to do.

My windows partition are FAT32 so I'm working off a USB key. The following is the commands I keep on the USB key in a file called 'wifi_init.sh':
------- BOF
#unload current drivers
ifconfig wlan0 down
rmmod r8180
#
#
#compile & install the patched driver
cd /mnt/sda1_removable/
cd rtl8180-0.21/
#patch -Np1 -i ../rtl8180-0.21v2.patch
make && make install
depmod -a
modprobe r8180
#
#
#compile & install aircrack-ng
cd ..
cd aircrack-ng-0.7
make && make install
#
#
#put the card in monitor mode
iwconfig wlan0 mode monitor
---EOF

Of course, you must make sure all paths match the names in the file, as well as the USB key mounting point.

The main point here is that the monitor mode may be set manually instead of letting airodump do it systematically each time it is launched. Especially when the automatic procedure is not coherent.
Maybe this can help some people keep some hair on their head.

[buggs187]

Try this to place you card in monitor mode.

airmon-ng start wlan0

thats what i use. Hope that helps.

[halftoke]

Try this to place you card in monitor mode.

airmon-ng start wlan0

thats what i use. Hope that helps.

I have the same problem. Using buggs' quoted code, my intellinet card starts in monitor mode fine with airmon, but still the same problem with airodump.