I am using ArchLinux on the Asus eee701. My favourite lightweight distro without loosing functions.
Internal wifi (wifi0) connects to internet.
USB-wifi zd1211 (wifi1) is set up as an accesspoint.
Internal ETH0 connects to Pinapple with static IP.
The computer is setup to share internet from wifi0 to wifi1 and eth0/pineapple.
I connect my computer, iPhone or iPad to the accesspoint on my netbook and login via ssh. Then I can configure manually wifi0 to connect to the present wireless network at my location.
While logged in I start screen and run everything there so I can reconnect to it later...
I also added my USB-GPS and another wireless nano-stick (wifi2) to enable some wardriving with Kismet. :)
I have used cpufreq-utils to set the 701 to a lower CPU-frequency to preserve battery and avoid running the computer too hot.
To know when the battery runs low I have made a script that runs in cron that sends a push-message to my iPhone/iPad via Prowl whenever the battery goes down 10%. And before it runs out completely of battery the computer automatically shuts down to avoid disk-errors.
Still work in progress, but it has worked good so far...
I have configured my Asus EEE701 7" netbook to do the job for me. Pinapple connected to the ethernet of the 701, internal wifi connects to the internet, and then another wifi-dongle acting like an accesspoint for me to control it via ssh with my laptop, iPhone or iPad. Everything batterypowered and fits easily in a quite small bag. And no wires at all connected to my computer that might look suspicious. :) Dumps and other stuff are saved on a SD-card. And the 701 also has quite good batterytime so right now it would be good to find a bigger batterypack for the Pineapple.
Works for me.
Then I say it would be easier to learn how to setup a router from scratch than to figure out how to hack your(?) router? I am pretty sure it is a much faster way.
Started out with a Vic20, Then got myself a Commodore 128D. After that I got a real beast. :) An Amiga 2000 with 80MB Harddrive and a PC-card that I could boot up a 8088 or something like that... ;) And outside the case was a 150MB Quantum Bigfoot 5,25" scsi-drive that sounded like an airplane. 80+150MB was a killer at that time! :)
A few years later I upgraded to my first PC. A 486DX4-100MHz. 320MB HD.
Now I am grown up and switched completely to Mac. :)