Airmon-ng throw an error when creating a new madwifi-ng VAP

[nka@…]

I've got a D-Link DWL-G630 H/W Ver.: D1 PCMCIA wireless adapter. Here it is:

# lspci|grep Atheros
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5005G 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)

This card seems to work fine with madwifi-ng-0.9.3 driver.

However I noticed a strange thing when I use airmon-ng to create new VAP:

laptop rikz # airmon-ng


Interface       Chipset         Driver

wifi0           Atheros         madwifi-ng
eth1            Centrino b/g    ipw2200

laptop rikz # airmon-ng start wifi0 9


Interface       Chipset         Driver

wifi0           Atheros         madwifi-ngError for wireless request "Set Frequency" (8B04) :
    SET failed on device ath0 ; No such device.

eth1            Centrino b/g    ipw2200
ath4            Atheros         madwifi-ng VAP (parent: wifi0)

laptop rikz # airmon-ng start wifi0 9


Interface       Chipset         Driver

wifi0           Atheros         madwifi-ng
eth1            Centrino b/g    ipw2200
ath4            Atheros         madwifi-ng VAP (parent: wifi0)
ath5            Atheros         madwifi-ng VAP (parent: wifi0) (monitor mode enabled)

As you can see, when there is no VAPs airmon-ng fails to create a new one with specified option because it supposes that ath device number will be 0. madwifi-ng gives an error message. Looks like airmon-ng tries to ask madwifi-ng to change options of nonexistent interface. And ath number is not always 0, when I remove my VAPs with 'airmon-ng stop ath[4,5]', the new integers for ath numeration are 6 and 7:

laptop rikz # airmon-ng start wifi0 9


Interface       Chipset         Driver

wifi0           Atheros         madwifi-ngError for wireless request "Set Frequency" (8B04) :
    SET failed on device ath0 ; No such device.

eth1            Centrino b/g    ipw2200
ath6            Atheros         madwifi-ng VAP (parent: wifi0)

laptop rikz # airmon-ng start wifi0 9


Interface       Chipset         Driver

wifi0           Atheros         madwifi-ng
eth1            Centrino b/g    ipw2200
ath6            Atheros         madwifi-ng VAP (parent: wifi0)
ath7            Atheros         madwifi-ng VAP (parent: wifi0) (monitor mode enabled)

I'm running Gentoo Linux with 2.6.20-ck1 kernel, madwifi-ng-0.9.3-r3, aircrack-ng-0.7-r2. Contact me for any additional info.

[misterx]

airmon-ng when it is asked to create a new madwifi-ng interface in monitor mode send a command to wlanconfig. wlanconfig create the VAP then return the name of the newly created VAP. Then with this interface name, airmon-ng call iwconfig to change the interface channel name. That's where it fails.

Here, you seems to have, like a lot of ppl, udev that is changing the interface name, that's why it fails.

Unfortunatly, I couldn't tell you how to solve it, I don't use udev at all.

[misterx]

Milestone 0.8.1 deleted

[misterx - You Useless POS]

Who gives a crap if it works for you. So you close this topic? How LESS helpful could you get? If we only gave a crap whether or not it worked for you then you had better hope to hell we're more helpful than you are! Of course it's when it tries to set the channel it fails. The error tells us that! You didn't add a single bit of helpful information, you just close the ticket. Next time we need your kind of help we'll just call Helen Keller instead. Even dead she'd be more help!

Oh... I'm having this problem as well. Atheros card in a laptop.

[misterx]

TAKE TIME TO READ DOCUMENTATION TO SOLVE THAT ISSUE.