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Kismet is a very handy wireless scanning and capture program. Unlike programs such as Netstumbler, Kismet allows you to capture wireless traffic. This could, of course, be used for both good and evil, so I leave it up to you to do what you will.

Kismet is in Portage, but it lags a bit behind the current version (2008.05 is in Portage and 2010.07R1 is the latest as of this writing). You should be able to get the latest version by using an overlay, but I’m not keen on using overlay software unless I really need the bleeding edge. Use portage to install Kismet:

%sudo emerge -av net-wireless/kismet

Once installed, you’ll need to modify the config file before you begin scanning. Open /etc/kismet.conf in your favorite text editor and add your login to the ‘suidsuser’ variable. There are quite a few options to configure, but the one you must configure is a capture source. For our needs, change the ‘source=’ line to the following:

source=ipw2100,eth1,ipw

I suppose this would work for most of the older IPW2100-based Centrino notebooks since the Centrino chipset is the same. Save the config and exit. You should be able to type ‘kismet’ at a terminal and have the client and server automatically start. If this doesn’t work, you may have to manually change the kismet server to set uid. Do the following:

%sudo chmod +s /usr/bin/kismet_server

Try launching the program again. If you see a text based interface and some SSIDs, you’re good to go! If not, you may have to fiddle with your settings a bit more. Either way, happy scanning!

I know, I know… why am I using a proprietary Unix after singing the praises of Debian GNU/Linux and dumping Mac OS X? Why the heck not? I love tinkering and experimenting with stuff. Besides, it wasn’t terribly difficult to get Linux working on my Sun Ultra 1 Creator.

So why bother with proprietary Sun hardware at all? Because it’s CHEAP and loads of fun to tinker with. Since the dot com crash of 2000, there’s a plethora of Sun hardware to be found at very reasonable prices. My Ultra 1 Creator listed for $27,000 when it first came out in 1996 but I got it for FREE on Craigslist.

Since I got this machine free off Craigslist, and it did come with all the Solaris media (and then some), I have tinkered with it in several ways. When I first brought it home and booted it up, it had the 64-bit version of Solaris 9 on it. I’ve never really cared for Solaris (some call it Slowaris) so the first inclination was to install FreeBSD. I got that installed without any problems, including X.org, etc…  Yawn. Now on to Linux. My first inclination was to try Gentoo but I gave up on it since I couldn’t get the kernel to compile no matter what I tried.

Next I looked around to see which other Linux distros support UltraSPARC hardware. Since I’m particularly fond of Debian, I naturally jumped in that direction. Getting the current stable (Etch at that time) Debian CD to boot turned out to be a major drag since it would continually freeze when trying to load the SCSI driver, a known bug in the installer. For kicks, I decided to see if a network boot would get me where I wanted to be. Sure enough, after setting up a RARP and TFTP server, the installer went flawlessly when using the Debian “Testing” image.

But even that got boring. So now I decided to get Solaris installed again. Not only that, I want to get the 64-bit kernel booting. It turns out this is more of a challenge than I thought.

To begin, I put the Solaris 9 installation CD in the drive and boot up. If you’re wondering why I don’t use Solaris 10, that’s because it isn’t supported on such old hardware. The first hiccup I run into is the screen warning me that a 64-bit OS is installed but that the installer will boot into the 32-bit SunOS kernel. Not a big problem. When I see the “Initializing Memory” screen, I hit Stop + A to drop to an Open Boot PROM screen. At the “ok>” screen, I type “boot cdrom kernel/sparcv9/unix” and hit enter. Sure enough, it boots the 64-bit kernel.

Now for the next hiccup. When the installer starts, you eventually wind up in a small xterm-ish console and it asks you if it can repartition the hard drive so it can place some temporary installer files on the hard disk. Most users of modern operating systems have come to expect that the OS will just ask you if it can erase what’s already there and move on. Not so with Solaris. It will warn you that it can’t partition enough space from the available free space on the drive. So now what?

I wound up bailing out of the installer with a Control + C and got dropped to a root prompt. Remembering another time I had to use a new disk in Solaris, I entered the format command to start that utility. I formatted the drive, gave it a label and rebooted. This time it worked. However, when I got to the section of the installer where you actually install the Solaris software, my CD drive starting acting up so I couldn’t complete the install. I’ll come back to it later I suppose. I guess free hardware comes with a price?