Orinoco Monitor Mode Patch Page


	Orinoco Monitor Mode Patch Page

News Flash - 2/19/04

The orinoco drivers now suppport monitor mode in CVS. Monitor mode is now handled via the iwconfig interface. Prism headers are not available.

For older versions of the driver (0.13e and prior)

Driver version	Patch
pcmcia-cs-3.1.33 / orinoco_cs-0.09b	orinoco-09b-packet-1.diff
orinoco_cs-0.11b	orinoco-0.11b-patch.diff
pcmcia-cs-3.1.34	pcmcia-cs-3.1.34-orinoco-patch.diff
pcmcia-cs-3.2.0	pcmcia-cs-3.2.0-orinoco-patch.diff
pcmcia-cs-3.2.1	pcmcia-cs-3.2.1-orinoco-patch.diff
pcmcia-cs-3.2.2	pcmcia-cs-3.2.2-orinoco-patch.diff
pcmcia-cs-3.2.3	pcmcia-cs-3.2.3-orinoco-patch.diff
pcmcia-cs-3.2.4	pcmcia-cs-3.2.4-orinoco-patch.diff
pcmcia-cs-3.2.5	pcmcia-cs-3.2.5-orinoco-patch.diff
pcmcia-cs-3.2.6	pcmcia-cs-3.2.6-orinoco-patch.diff
pcmcia-cs-3.2.7	pcmcia-cs-3.2.7-orinoco-patch.diff
orinoco-0.13b.tar.gz	orinoco-0.13b-patched.diff
orinoco-0.13d.tar.gz	orinoco-0.13d-patch.diff
orinoco-0.13e.tar.gz	orinoco-0.13e-patch.diff
orinoco-0.13e-dragorn-patch.diff This patch addresses problems related to slow channel changing performance while scanning in monitor mode. Kismet GPS data was getting dropped as a result. Channel changing performance is improved with this patch so that GPS performance is no longer affected. Thanks to dragorn for discovering and patching for this problem!
orinoco-0.13e-2.6.2-patch.diff Adrian Woodley's port for the 2.6.2 kernel.
Latest (>= 0.15) Orinoco drivers support monitor mode. No patch required :)	Official Orinoco Drivers home page.

Using Monitor Mode:

The following command is used to enable monitor mode:

iwpriv eth0 monitor <m> <c>
   m - one of the following
      0 - disable monitor mode
      1 - enable monitor mode with Prism2 header info prepended
          to packet (ARPHRD_IEEE80211_PRISM)
      2 - enable monitor mode with no Prism2 info (ARPHRD_IEEE80211)
   c - channel to monitor

General Information

This patch enables an Orinoco nic to be placed into monitor mode sending raw packets to the user via the PF_PACKET interface. A channel hopper for Orinoco cards using this patch is avaiable for Kismet users (not required by AirSnort). It is also useful with tcpdump or ethereal.

Some things you should know about the patch:

A common problem I am hearing about is people installing pcmcia-cs when they already have kernel pcmcia built in. The problem is that the orinoco drivers for kernel pcmcia install to a different location than the orinoco drivers for pcmcia-cs. This often results in two sets of drivers being present after doing a make install on the pcmcia-cs sources. The problem is that the patched version of the orinoco drivers will not be used, rather the old unpatched drivers get loaded and you will be led to believe that the patch has failed. Make sure that you do not have more than one copy of hermes.o, orinoco.o and orinoco_cs.o in your /lib/modules/<kernel> subtree. Test that you are actually using patched drivers with the following:
```
iwpriv eth0
```
If you do not see "monitor" listed as the last available private ioctl, then you are not using patched drivers. Remove any old drivers that you find per the instructions above.

You must be configured to use the orinoco_cs driver. NOT the wvlan_cs or wavelan_cs drivers.

Install the pcmcia-cs sources, apply the patch, configure/make/make install the sources, then make/make install the drivers in the pcmcia-cs/wireless subdirectory if they were not built by your initial make. For those unfamiliar with applying patches, the command looks something like this when applied from the parent directory of your pcmcia-cs source tree:
```
patch -p0 < pcmcia-cs-X.Y.Z-orinoco-patch.diff
```

If you want to install one of the orinoco-0.xx patches directly to your kernel sources or to pcmcia-cs sources that I have not yet provided a patch for (see pcmcia-cs-X.Y.Z/wireless/orinoco_cs.c to determine what version you need), then drop the patch in the same directory as the orinoco source files and use the following command

patch -p1 < orinoco-0.XX-patch.diff

UPDATE 9/25/02
Thanks to Ian Goldberg and Pat Swieskowski it appears that the problems with monitor mode with v8.10 firmware may be solved. The appropriate patch is the 3.2.1 patch above. After I get some feedback I may go back and update some of the older patches. I would also like to hear feedback on v8.42 firmware.
The following may no longer apply with the latest patch
It appears that the patches does not (for the moment) work with Orinoco firmware v8.10. User snake@.... provided this link to v6.06 firmware that you should be able to successfully downgrade to WSU_606.exe, downgrade at your own risk.
This patch enables live "monitoring" with tcpdump, or ethereal. You need the latest version of each however, along with the latest version of libpcap (get the latest nightly build).

12/18/03 - IT APPEARS THAT THE LATEST PATCHES WORK WITH ALL VERSIONS OF ORINOCO FIRMWARE

The patch was tested with an Orinoco Gold card running firmware 7.52. I am told Orinoco Silver cards work as well. Firmware 8.10 from Dec 2001 seems to fail after gathering a few packets for some reason.
- I have reports of the following firmware versions working: 6.04, 6.16, 7.28?, 7.52, 8.10 (with the 3.2.1 patch)
- While the following versions do not work: 7.28?, 8.10 (try the 3.2.1 patch)
Orinoco firmware upgrade/downgrade links (Windows executables)
- 6.06 - WSU_606.exe
- 6.16 - WSU_616.exe
- 7.28 - WSU_728.exe
- 7.52 - WSU_752.exe
- 8.10 - WSU_810.exe

Questions to: Snax