jetlib.sec » BackTrack Linux Forums » Awus036h dropping out... how can I debug ?

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BackTrack Linux Forums

• February 19, 2012
• 

  Awus036h dropping out... how can I debug ?

  Posted: February 19th, 2012, 1:19am PST by NopSlayer

  Tags:   

  Hi All,
  
  Having some problems here with an awus036h. I have scoured google for a fix and tried everything but no luck, am asking here now.
  
  When I run "airmon-ng start wlan0" everything starts perfectly. When I run "airodump-ng mon0" it works perfectly for around 30 seconds.
  
  At this point, beacon count etc stops incrementing so basically the awus036h just seems to have died. All the BSSID remain on the screen, BUT eventually after around 2 minutes all of the BSSID slowly drop from the list in airodump-ng until no networks remain.
  
  Now if I try and re-run airodump-ng at this point, it cannot see any networks at all. Yet the networks are still there ...
  
  The only temporary fix I could find was to run "airmon-ng stop mon0" + "airmon-ng stop wlan0". After I do this I am able to re-run "airmon-ng start wlan0" then proceed with "airodump-ng mon0" and it works fine. Only for another 30 seconds or a minute of course, then fails again.
  
  Now, I have read people say to try a new usb cable, I have tried 3 different usb cables. I have also tried a TWIN usb cable with twin plugs in case not enough power was getting to the device. Neither of these have helped, it drops out no matter what usb cable or how many usb plugs and extra power it is getting. So, I am quite sure it is not a faulty cable because if I connect to a network with WICD in backtrack (not in monitor mode) or just in Windows this awus036h will stay connected 24/7 without a problem.
  
  I also noticed some people were having problems with things like "wpa-supplicant" and "dhclient" service running etc. I noticed if these are running that Airmon-ng will tell you this may interfere and cause drop-outs. Well I have made sure none of these services are running and I have learnt about the "airmon-ng check" command and "airmon-ng check kill" for that matter, so unless I missed something I dont think those are interfering, I dont get the warning when I launch "airmon-ng" for my testing.
  
  I dont know much about how to debug the awus036h driver in backtrack to see if its crashing, can anybody help me with further diagnosis ?
  
  I tried tailing dmesg but couldnt see anything in the log around the time when the awus036h stops receiving data in airodump-ng and dies... so now I am really out of ideas.