Ethereal-users: [Ethereal-users] Ethereal FAQ Confusion re Wireless

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From: "Robinson, Eric R." <erobinson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 11 Jul 2002 16:52:22 -0700
Greetings!

Can someone please clarify what seems to be a problem with one of the
answers in the Ethereal FAQ?

The faq says, with regard to wireless sniffing...

"On Linux systems, when using either the orinoco_cs-0.09b driver or the
driver in at least some versions of the Linux kernel, the
`orinoco-09b-packet-1.diff' patch on the Orinoco Monitor Mode Patch Page
should allow you to do capture raw 802.11 packets.

The patch appears to apply to the driver in the 2.4.18 kernel, but we don't
know whether it works; the directions on that page are for the pcmcia-cs
drivers, not for the driver in the kernel itself.

Note that the page indicates that not all versions of the Orinoco firmware
support this patch."

There's a big difference between SHOULD allow capture, and DOES allow
capture, especially considering the following exchange between David Gibson
and a mailing list user, which seems to contradict the Ethereal FAQ...

On Tue, Mar 12, 2002 at 01:38:03PM +0100, ThE MaDj0kEr wrote:
> 
> I've got a Compaq WL110 PCMCIA card. Netstumbler reports firmware version
as
> 4.0x, and drivers version as 7.5x (I don't remember those numbers right
> now).
> 
> WL110 is just an Orinoco Gold card, and my problem is I can't make the
card
> works in monitor mode under linux, using orinoco_cs 0.09b and patch from
> http://airsnort.shmoo.com/OrinocoPatch.html (nor using orinoco_cs 0.10).
I'm
> also using latest linux-wlan-ng package. With all of this, the card works
> fine, but monitor mode doesn't work.

I haven't implemented monitor mode in the orinoco driver yet.  I'm not
sure if linux-wlan-ng supports it on Symbol firmware cards like the
Compaq.  You might need to look at the Spectrum24t driver or one of
the other Symbol-specific drivers.

	-- 
	David Gibson

Does the orinoco_cs driver with the patch allow raw frame capture or not?
The Ethereal FAQ says it SHOULD, but the driver deleoper says it's not built
into the driver. I'm probably just missing something.

--Eric