Jump to content

AWUS036NH on Raspberry Pi - Kali 2017.1


Cap_Sig

Recommended Posts

I am having some trouble with the Alfa AWUS036NH.  When connected to a raspberry pi 3 with kali 2017.1 it will not capture handshakes as well as not showing associated clients.  The adapter can find APs but that is all.  airmon-ng is showing the adapter running driver rt2800usb.  I have tried "airmon-ng check kill" prior to monitor mode with no luck.  Also have tried "apt-get install firmware-misc-nonfree" which is supposed to help with rt2800usb issues on a rt3070 chip.

I have tried using the adapter on a full install kali x64 2017.1 machine install and all appears to be working plug and play.  

I have searched the raspberry pi, kali, and aircrack forums but have yet to find anything with a working solution. (most threads were dead before solution was posted)

Any help with this issue is greatly appreciated! 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The raspberry pi has different kernel drivers than the mainline desktop. My suggestion is to try Re4son's Pi, which is a modified kali kernel meant for Raspberry Pi's and may at some point be the main kernel for Raspberry images down the road. It may(or may not) fix the wireless issues, but that would be something to try first, and then if still not working, you may have to go with a different card till the Pi has more supported drivers for different cards.

 

https://whitedome.com.au/re4son/re4son-kernel/

 

Re4son is one of the people who develop's Kali Pi images and has done a lot of work to improve on the base Kali Pi images. Instructions on using his kernel on the link above, which should help with more than just wifi drivers in general, but see his site, and you can ping him on Twitter. He's generally pretty quick to respond with questions, but is in the Australia timezone as far as I know.

 

Good luck!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@digip thanks for the great info!  I have looked at the Re4son kernel previously for some of the other benefits that come with it, especially CPU performance increase.  I did go ahead and install to see if it would fix the AWUS036NH issues.  It did not fix the issues with seeing clients and capturing handshakes.  Hopefully there will be support in the near future. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

That stinks, but was worth a shot.

You can try and ping him on twitter, and ask him if he's tested the "AWUS036NH" card on a Pi. He might already have drivers for it.

You can also search git for the card and Pi drivers. Might be some alternative drivers for this card specifically for the Pi.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have done some light searching on github with no luck.  Probably do some more looking there later on today.  Probably will ping him on twitter and hope for a solution.

The ath9k driver is working so far flawlessly on another alfa adapter.

 

Thanks!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 2 weeks later...

You should test the card while watching the kernel logs.

 

Run this.

Tail -f /var/log/kern.log

Then run your Console commands that you find to have issues...

 

by the way. these alpha cards Consume too much power, the raspberry pi does not supply enough voltage and you may see from the kern.log a 'over current' problem.

 

You need a powered usb hub.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 hours ago, i8igmac said:

You should test the card while watching the kernel logs.

 

Run this.

Tail -f /var/log/kern.log

Then run your Console commands that you find to have issues...

 

by the way. these alpha cards Consume too much power, the raspberry pi does not supply enough voltage and you may see from the kern.log a 'over current' problem.

 

You need a powered usb hub.

I wonder if a lot of the issue with these on the Pi is proper power and connectivity for the USB cards. I see similar issues when using in a VM, even under Vmware, that when on native hardware, they tend to work fine with no issue, but same card might barf on vbox completely and work partly on VMware, even when configured with the correct USB settings on host's bios and in VM config.

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

56 minutes ago, digip said:

I wonder if a lot of the issue with these on the Pi is proper power and connectivity for the USB cards. I see similar issues when using in a VM, even under Vmware, that when on native hardware, they tend to work fine with no issue, but same card might barf on vbox completely and work partly on VMware, even when configured with the correct USB settings on host's bios and in VM config.

 

 

Indeed this is the issue most of the time. the pi is capable of running small devices But for sure alpha cards need a separate power supply.

 

The alpha card may work for a short period but all it takes is a large amount of data to pass through the card to trigger a malfunction of some kind.

 

I have had a alpha card working with a little hack like setting the packet size to the smallest size allowed but of course this will bring your throughput to a sluggish crawl. This solution wont work in all situations or other tasks.

 

Iwconfig wlan1 rate 1M

 

This would allow the card to run longer or delay the unstable conditipn long enough to accomplish small tasks.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

@BatPlack So far no luck with the card on the Raspberry Pi 3.  I have tried @i8igmac suggestion of using a powered hub.  This also did not fix the issue.  In my testing with the Pi 3 a powered hub is not required.  The actual adapter card only draws a 200-300 mw which is well within range of the USB abilities of the Pi 3.  I'm sure with other cards a powered hub would be required, especially on older model raspberry pis.  I have tested alfa AWUS036H, 500 mw and 1W, with no powered hub.  What seems to make a difference is having a power supply that can provide a true, clean, 5v and 2.5 amps.  The pi 3 seems to be capable of running two AWUS036H at full tx with no power issues.  

The AWUS036NH seems to work as a basic adapter(connecting to networks) but has issues when in monitor mode looking for clients.  It will find many APs with good signal strength just no clients that are associated.  

From my research and testing the Pi 3 can provide a total of 1.2 amps via usb IF the pi has a proper power source.  Many power issues are due to not using the right type of power source that results in voltage drops and lack of current. 

This is just my experience with using the adapters on the Pi 3 and could change depending on your exact setup. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...