Re: [Ethereal-users] Re: No 802.11?? on Linux Version??

[Guy Harris <guy@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, Jul 02, 2002 at 08:40:09AM -0700, Doug Cabell wrote:
> I FINALLY got the thing to run, the capture dialog box is physically too
> big,

Too big for what?

> but its running. Anyway, I thought the Linux version would decode
> 802.11, but I don't see anything that I don't see with the NT version. Whats
> up??

*All* versions of Ethereal will *decode* 802.11.

The question is whether they can *capture* raw 802.11 frames, which
depends mainly on the OS on which you're running Ethereal.

On Windows, the drivers don't provide a way to get raw 802.11 frames
through NDIS, and NDIS is the mechanism WinPcap uses to plug into the
network drivers.  I suspect the standard drivers on Windows on't provide
any way to get raw 802.11 frames at all.

On Linux and FreeBSD, some drivers do provide a way to capture raw
802.11 frames; at least some of the drivers require you to put the
adapter into a special mode to do that, however.

See

	http://www.ethereal.com/faq.html#q5.22

(I don't know whether there are special commands needed to capture raw
802.11 frames with adapters handled by the linux-wlan-ng Prism II
driver, nor, if there are, what those commands are.)