BT5 Alfa AWUS036NH

[nmcbride]

MacBook Pro Running BT5 Gnome Vmware

Recompiling the wireless drivers with the patches didn't work for me. Couldn't actually get them built seems the kernel is to new maybe?
Setting the power of course didn't work.
Updating then upgrading didn't work.

May end up trying the re-plugging in the usb multiple times to see if that
works but really isn't a good solution.

Anyone have any other ideas?

[jamko]

I am having the same issues. The AWUS036NH crashes during packet injection and I have to reboot multiple times before I can even get it to scan successfully for networks again. I have tried this on 32 and 64 bit BT4 and BT5, Virtualbox and USB live install. My internal atheros card works fine on the usb live install, so it is definitely something with this card. I have followed endless forum topics on this issue, but it never gets better. Probably just going to return the card and just use my internal G card. It seems the G version of this Alfa card works a lot better. It is strange that some people have no issues, possibly hardware firmware difference on the batch of cards.

[dem0critus]

Hi

I'm using an AWUS036NH on BT5 in virtualbox (gnome 32 bit). (on vaio laptop)

airmon-ng shows:
wlan0 ralink RT2870/3070 rt2800USB - ph0

Then i do:
airmon-ng start wlan0
(it show me monitor mode enabled on mon0)

then i'm doing airodump-ng wlan0
ioctrl(siocsiwmode) failed: device or resourse busy

ARP linktype is set to 1 (ethernet) - expected ARPHDR_IEEE80211, ARPHDR_IEEE80211_FULL or ARPHDR_IEEE80211_PRISM instead. Make sure RFMON is enabled: run 'airmon-ng start wlan0 <#>'
Sysfs injection support was not found either.
See attachment,..


-Anybody any idea's what i'm doing wrong?
-Is the driver not installed correctly and so how can i solve it ?

Thanks for helping,..

Kind regards

I'm using VMWare fusion on Mac OS X Lion, and after trying everything in this thread, this was the only thing that worked for me, and it worked immediately.
Thanks brotha man.

[nmcbride]

I'm using VMWare fusion on Mac OS X Lion, and after trying everything in this thread, this was the only thing that worked for me, and it worked immediately.
Thanks brotha man.

I don't know why I can't find his post you are refering to. What was the actual fix you used?

[journeyman761]

Hi all

Thanks for responding,... got it working now:

First i went to the Wiki and found the troubleshoot, tried that but didn't got it working,...
Then i went to the Afla network website and found an install file for ubuntu: "Ubuntu 9.0 Install Process.pdf":

LINK IN ATTACHMENT,...

Open terminal:
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

Add "blacklist rt2800usb" (i put it at the bottum of the file)

Save blacklist.conf

re-plug AWUS036NH

He has quoted the wrong person. With a little bit more searching I was able to figure out what he was referring to. Just edit your black list file and you should have injection working.

[dem0critus]

I did exactly as it described in that thread, but it turns out that it only worked temporarily.. It seems like no matter what I do, sometimes it will work and sometimes it just wont. I've tried making various changes to the blacklist file, but nothing seems to give me consistent results.

[nmcbride]

He has quoted the wrong person. With a little bit more searching I was able to figure out what he was referring to. Just edit your black list file and you should have injection working.

Oh so your saying the issue is that it loads the rt2800usb along side the rt2870sta?

[nmcbride]

He has quoted the wrong person. With a little bit more searching I was able to figure out what he was referring to. Just edit your black list file and you should have injection working.

I tried what you suggested and it seems it forces the card to use the rt2870sta module. Which however doesn't seem to work either. Can you confirm this is what is being used on your end which is working for you? I'm really not sure what else to try now.

[dem0critus]

Alright. At this point, I've tried everything, and I can't get this thing to work like I want it. I'm on BT5 w/ OS X Lion in vmware fusion.

The blacklisting of rt2800usb is not going to help you. Basically, what you need to do is load the driver using modprobe (modprobe rt2800usb) and you can unload it using rmmod (rmmod rt2800usb rt2x00usb rt2800lib rt2x00lib crc_ccitt mac80211 cfg80211) when the thing starts to act up. I made an alias by adding this line:

alias ndown='rmmod rt2800usb rt2x00usb rt2800lib rt2x00lib crc_ccitt mac80211 cfg80211'

to the end of ~/.bashrc, that way you can just type ndown whenever you want to unload the drivers.

That being said, I've noticed that if you airmon-ng start wlan0 immediately after the thing is live (type the command, and watch for the blue led to go on, then as soon as the light goes off for the first time, hit enter.) it works almost always. Another way I've gotten it to work is by using airmon-ng check kill in the same way.

I think what's happening is that bt is trying to dhclient3 the thing right as you plug it in, and that somehow interferes with it. Also, it might have something to do with the fact that the nh has two chips in it, both with separate drivers, the 2nd of which may be causing the error.

I'm not extremely versed in this kind of thing just yet, so please let me know if you have ideas.

EDIT:
I made this shell script you can use. It just refreshes the driver, then tests for injection. For me, this will fix the problem around 40% of the time. Sometimes the script will fix it right away, sometimes I'll have to run it 5-10 times before I get injection, but eventually it comes thru. The injection will normally work until you put the interface down again, here y'go.

#!/bin/bash
modprobe -r rt2800usb rt2x00usb rt2800lib rt2x00lib crc_ccitt mac80211 cfg80211
modprobe rt2800usb
airmon-ng check kill && airmon-ng start wlan0 11
aireplay-ng -9 mon0

now, this starts the mon0 interface on 11, which is just to test. You can change that, but you can also just do it after it's successfully injecting. For instance, if you wanted to change to channel 1 you would do:

iwconfig wlan0 channel 1
iwconfig mon0 channel 1

I still cannot figure out what is causing this to happen for the life of me, but I'm assuming it has something to do with the usb driver in vmware... I know for sure that it's the VMware that's causing it, because it works beautifully off of a hard boot.

[nmcbride]

Alright. At this point, I've tried everything, and I can't get this thing to work like I want it. I'm on BT5 w/ OS X Lion in vmware fusion.

The blacklisting of rt2800usb is not going to help you. Basically, what you need to do is load the driver using modprobe (modprobe rt2800usb) and you can unload it using rmmod (rmmod rt2800usb rt2x00usb rt2800lib rt2x00lib crc_ccitt mac80211 cfg80211) when the thing starts to act up. I made an alias by adding this line:

alias ndown='rmmod rt2800usb rt2x00usb rt2800lib rt2x00lib crc_ccitt mac80211 cfg80211'

to the end of ~/.bashrc, that way you can just type ndown whenever you want to unload the drivers.

That being said, I've noticed that if you airmon-ng start wlan0 immediately after the thing is live (type the command, and watch for the blue led to go on, then as soon as the light goes off for the first time, hit enter.) it works almost always. Another way I've gotten it to work is by using airmon-ng check kill in the same way.

I think what's happening is that bt is trying to dhclient3 the thing right as you plug it in, and that somehow interferes with it. Also, it might have something to do with the fact that the nh has two chips in it, both with separate drivers, the 2nd of which may be causing the error.

I'm not extremely versed in this kind of thing just yet, so please let me know if you have ideas.

I will try your suggestions and see if any work better than what I'm doing now. I have just been plugging it in, check if it works, if not rmmod all the modules, unplug it and then plug it in again. After a few tries it starts to work. Once it is up it is solid. I always stop networking and pkill dhclient3 so I don't have the issue you are referring to. I also blacklisted rt2870sta. On another note after i'm done with everything in monitor mode and try to actually associate with an AP it always fails. Maybe because I have rt2870sta blacklisted lol. Who knows.

Edit:

Ah so that is probably why my actual association is failing then. It probably needs both the rt2800usb and the rt2870sta then.