Thursday, February 25, 2010

Broadcom issues with newer OpenWrt trunk

I've been trying to compile the new svn of OpenWrt and wireless seems to be a no-go for the WRT54GL. Then I ran across the following on the OpenWrt site:

Note: The brcm47xx still won't work for those of you needing broadcom wifi, stick to brcm-2.4. We will tell you when it does work.
After much testing and corresponding failures, I'm thinking this is not going to work in the near future, especially for using Kismet. So, I kept an older version of the svn in a separate directory and have backed that up for use with building Kismet. The total structure is around 2Gb, so it is rather large. Not sure where I can host that data yet, but if anyone wants an older version that will build for use with Kismet (this is the same directory that was used to build the images on this site), let me know and I'll try to find a place to put them.

6 comments:

Jeremy said...

I've actually been able to get the svn trunk to compile with the latest kismet via your instructions. wlan0 gets put in monitor mode by kismet and even channel hops. I'm able to use it as a drone without issue.

Let me change some stuff around, compile, image the router, and link my config here for you to try.

Michael Boyd said...

Wonderful! Looking forward to testing it out!

Jeremy said...

Mike,

Below is the link to my config file. I just downloaded the latest svn for openwrt but not for kismet. I'm assuming kismet is not your issue but it may be. I'll try the latest kismet too.

One thing you might need to check is your wireless config file on the router located at:
/etc/config/wireless

The following settings for that work for me:
config wifi-device wlan0
option type mac80211
option channel 5
option macaddr 00:25:9c:c9:83:ba

config wifi-iface
option device wlan0
option network lan
option mode monitor

After you change that file you'll need to reboot your router and the wireless should come on at that point. Then edit your kismet_drone.conf to use interface wlan0 and it should work.

Here's my config link:
http://blindrodent.com/kismet/Config.in

Let me know if that works for you. Thanks a lot for your instructions, they worked great!

Jeremy said...

Just wanted to clarify that my svn co for kismet was Feb 15th, if that matters for you.

Michael Boyd said...

Worked like a charm! Thanks! I eventually need to put this in a doc and post it here. I'll add your changes into the mix shortly.

Jeremy said...

I was thinking the same thing. I'll be putting a how-to on my personal wiki that I'll link here when I'm done. Most of it will be based on what you've done here. Again, Thank you!