Problem Alfa AWUS036H

[kobe54]

I have a problem with BT5: my usb wireless card driver uses alfa AWUS036H rtl8187 but that does not work well for browsing the internet, because I can not connect on ath0, I was told that the r8187 drivers are better, but the compat-wireless are the most mature. how do I install the compatible drivers, or other driver for BT5 r1

Please help me I can not make full use of the distro.

Sorry for my English.

[sickness]

Backtrack comes with drivers for AWUS036H included and they work well. So you might want to consider that something else might be wrong.

[legitnick]

Sometimes putting the interface down then bringing it up fixes the issue but I would literally have to do it every 5 minutes so I only use my alfa when I'm using aircrack-ng(r8187 driver).
Try running this to bring the interface up you should be using wlan0 not ath0

 
rmmod rtl8187
rfkill block all
rfkill unblock all
modprobe rtl8187
rfkill unblock all
ifconfig wlan0 up

The r8187/ieee80211 driver has to be manually installed on BT5 R1 but if you're using the card to browse the internet it's recommended to you use the patched rtl8187 driver that's already installed because it's more stable than the r8187. If you're using the card with aircrack-ng you should use the r8187 driver. You can download it from here and use this tutorial to install it.


To use both of the drivers at the same time without running into conflict/kernel panic can be done by blacklisting both of them using this:

cp /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.backup
echo "blacklist rtl8187" | tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
echo "blacklist r8187" | tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

Once both drivers are blacklisted you need to load atleast one of them but you can't load both at the same time.
To load r8187:

modprobe -r rtl8187 && modprobe r8187

To load rtl8187:

modprobe -r r8187 && modprobe rtl8187

[maverik35]

I have a problem with BT5: my usb wireless card driver uses alfa AWUS036H rtl8187 but that does not work well for browsing the internet, because I can not connect on ath0, I was told that the r8187 drivers are better, but the compat-wireless are the most mature. how do I install the compatible drivers, or other driver for BT5 r1

Please help me I can not make full use of the distro.

Sorry for my English.

I have an Alfa AWUS036H, and surf pretty good..But my question is: Are you trying to conect to ath0 (this is atheros not realtek)..?
use ifconfig and see the interfaces..You should get a wlanX (wlan0, wlan1, etc) for you realtek Alfa..I do not understand how you use ath0 unless you are using your internal mini PCI or mini PCIe, Atheros, which could be using a driver not compatible or moded for BT5....

Check that, ath0 is for Atheros, not Alfa's realtek chip....

Use this:
lsusb | grep -i network (USB wireless interfaces)
Check your wireless interfaces in mini pci: lspci | grep -i network
Once you see what interfaces you have, use the ethtool:
ethtool -i "your interface" (wlan0, wlan1, ath0, eth0, eth1)..>You need to install ethtool (aptitude install ethtool)
It will give the driver info used: Driver name, driver version and firmware...

Best of lucks...

[ShadowMaster]

Not only is ath0 for atheros and NOT realtek(wlanX, monX), ath0 is only there, 99% of the time, when you run airmon-ng. ath0 is usually the child device (VAP) the airmon-ng creates from wifiX (the default atheros interface.) run "iwconfig" and see what devices you have. One of them should be wlanX (X is usually 0). BTW, I like parentheses.

[maverik35]

Not only is ath0 for atheros and NOT realtek(wlanX, monX), ath0 is only there, 99% of the time, when you run airmon-ng. ath0 is usually the child device (VAP) the airmon-ng creates from wifiX (the default atheros interface.) run "iwconfig" and see what devices you have. One of them should be wlanX (X is usually 0). BTW, I like parentheses.

Well, I do not share that, in my case I have the same device, never had to use airmon..When starting airodump-ng it switches card to monitor mode..I used aircrack-ng in Debian Squeeze, Jaunty, and other linux distros. In BT, when you start airdoump-ng it starts in Monitor mode, unless first switched to mode "managed", you can sure use airmon, but I never had to use it..Try it...
As a matter of fact, if needed, I bring down my interface, change mode with iwconfig and bring it back up..

I would appreciate if you can post the link to that info. I'd like to read it, if you don't mind. One never stops learning.

best regards.

[ShadowMaster]

I've never heard of airodump-ng putting the card into monitor mode automatically. If it works for you, that's pretty cool. I don't know if that'll help for aireplay-ng or not, so I'm gonna stick with my way. BTW, most my info was gotten from the Offensive Security WiFu course. It's pretty reliable, but I'm unfortunately precluded from posting the documents as per legal agreements. The rest of it was gotten from my personal experience with my own awuso36h card. Let me know what card you use, and what distro you use it with, so we can compare. Also if you use Win7 host BT5 vmware guest, like I do.

[snafu777]

Well, I do not share that, in my case I have the same device, never had to use airmon..When starting airodump-ng it switches card to monitor mode..I used aircrack-ng in Debian Squeeze, Jaunty, and other linux distros. In BT, when you start airdoump-ng it starts in Monitor mode, unless first switched to mode "managed", you can sure use airmon, but I never had to use it..Try it...
As a matter of fact, if needed, I bring down my interface, change mode with iwconfig and bring it back up..

I would appreciate if you can post the link to that info. I'd like to read it, if you don't mind. One never stops learning.

best regards.

maverik35,

You are very mistaken friend. Here is a dump to clear up any misconceptions:

sudo airodump-ng wlan0
[sudo] password for user: 
ioctl(SIOCSIWMODE) failed: Device or resource busy

ARP linktype is set to 1 (Ethernet) - expected ARPHRD_IEEE80211,
ARPHRD_IEEE80211_FULL or ARPHRD_IEEE80211_PRISM instead.  Make
sure RFMON is enabled: run 'airmon-ng start wlan0 <#>'
Sysfs injection support was not found either.

[darcstar]

The simple answer can be that the power is too high and you are too close to the AP. Try moving away from the AP and see how it performs.