Needed parts:

• A Fonera 2.0 (1st Fon wireless router featuring a USB port)
• An externally powered USB hub
• A USB GPS receiver  gpsd ready (compatibility list)
• A USB pendrive
• 8 AA rechargeable batteries or 2 equivalent battery packs
• Optional: 2 battery holders

Hardware setup:

4 batteries will power the Fonera and the others 4 will power USB hub, ie: pendrive and GPS receiver. Both devices should carry a voltage regulator, so as long as your batteries deliver around 5v you’ll be fine. I advise batteries of at least 1600mAh. My setup allows wardriving secessions lasting about 3 hours.

Firmware:

I use OpenWrt 10.03 Backfire on Fonera 2.0g, which requires the atheros build. Plenty of tutorials to flash a Fonera with standard OpenWrt are available. I advise using Gargoyle Router FonFlash tool.

Software packages:

With my Globalsat BU-353 GPS receiver here is the packages i needed to wardrive and troubleshoot:

# opkg install kismet-server gpsd netcat hotplug2 kmod-usb2 kmod-fs-vfat kmod-nls-base kmod-nls-cp437 kmod-usb-serial-pl2303 usbutils coreutils-stty picocom

The issue is to find a gpsd version that works well with your GPS receiver, your version of kismet and your openwrt environment. After trying several combinations which were either not working or proved to be unstable; I came-up with the following working perfectly with openwrt 10.03:

• http://hk.airpost.net/openwrt/libncurses_5.7-2_atheros.ipk
• http://hk.airpost.net/openwrt/libstdcpp_4.3.3%2Bcs-42_atheros.ipk
• http://hk.airpost.net/openwrt/kismet-server_2010-01-R1-1_atheros.ipk
• http://hk.airpost.net/openwrt/gpsd_2.37-4_atheros.ipk
• http://hk.airpost.net/openwrt/gpsd_2.37-5_atheros_include_cgps.ipk

I built a version of the gpsd package including cgps, which standard openwrt make file do not include. I found cgps to be a useful command line client for troubleshooting. To locate issues with gpsd, another useful client might be xgps which as an X11 interface.

Configure and launch:

Here is the kismet.conf I use. It only retrieve public info about the SSIDs (BSSIDs, cypher, channel, etc.) and store them in my usb pendrive. No personal info is stored (No traffic log).

Get inspire by my /etc/init.d script to setup and launch the wardriving session:

#!/bin/sh /etc/rc.common
# Wardriving script

STOP=40

start() {
mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/sda1
gpsd /dev/ttyUSB0 -n -G
/usr/bin/kismet_server &
}

stop() {
killall kismet_server
killall gpsd
sync
umount /mnt/sda1
}

Use collected datas:

I hadn’t the time to setup a neet implementation, but there is endless possibilities when serving collected data via a web server installed on the Fonera. You can even use XSLT to dynamically transform the XML files generated by kismet!

As an example, here is a quick XSLT script I’ve done to put BSSIDs in CSV files:

<xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"   version='1.0'>

  <xsl:output method="text" encoding="utf-8"/>

<!-- Parse "wireless-network" template only if attribute "type" is "infrastructure" -->
  <xsl:template match="wireless-network">
   <xsl:if test="@type='infrastructure'">
   <xsl:apply-templates/>
   </xsl:if>
  </xsl:template>

<!-- Write essid to csv and "cloaked" if "cloacked" attribute is true -->
  <xsl:template match="essid">
    <xsl:if test="@cloaked='true'">
    <xsl:text>cloaked</xsl:text>
   </xsl:if>
    <xsl:value-of select="text()"/>
    <xsl:text>,</xsl:text>
  </xsl:template>

<!-- Write BSSID to csv and create a new line -->
  <xsl:template match="BSSID">
    <xsl:value-of select="text()"/>
    <xsl:text>
</xsl:text>
  </xsl:template>

<!-- Ignore everything else -->
  <xsl:template match="text()">
  </xsl:template>

</xsl:stylesheet>

To install it:

cd /tmp
wget http://hk.airpost.net/openwrt/mjpg-streamer_r94-1_6499diff_atheros.ipk opkg update
opkg install mjp-streamer

Opkg will fetch the dependencies from the regular OpenWrt repository. See my previous post to get what is needed to stream with your webcam on OpenWrt.

# opkg install kmod-usb2 kmod-video-uvc kmod-i2c-core kmod-input-core mjpg-streamer

Start the demon with:

# /etc/init.d/mjpg-streamer start

Stream will be available at: http://ipaddress:8080/?action=stream

Note that an hotplug script was created in /etc/hotplug.d/usb and that the mjpg_streamer will start as soon as the webcam is connected.

Config is in: /etc/config/mjpg-streamer

The tool provided along with NVIDIA driver changes your resolution in /etc/X11/xorg.conf but not in monitors.xml as gnome’s “Monitors” tool does. As a consequence you need to edit /home/username/.config/monitors.xml manually:

<monitors version="1">
 <configuration>
 <clone>no</clone>
 <output name="default">
 <vendor>???</vendor>
 <product>0x0000</product>
 <serial>0x00000000</serial>
 <width>1920</width>
 <height>1080</height>
 <rate>0</rate>
 <x>0</x>
 <y>0</y>
 <rotation>normal</rotation>
 <reflect_x>no</reflect_x>
 <reflect_y>no</reflect_y>
 <primary>no</primary>
 </output>
 </configuration>
</monitors>

Based on mediawiki 1.15.1 default $wgGroupPermissions array. You need to add the following to your LocalSettings.php:

• rootfs: rootfs_debif01h.tar.lzma 123MB
• kernel package: linux-image-2.6.30-8-debif 1.9MB
• kernel headers package: linux-headers-2.6.30-8-debif 5.4MB

Instructions:

1. Find kernel binary in /boot of the rootfs or in  kenel package and upload it to the bifferboard.
2. Format a USB drive in ext3 and untar the rootfs to the drive.
3. Boot the bifferboard conected to your home network. It will get DHCP lease from your router.
4. ssh root@ipofthebifferboard (password is ‘password’)

Then you have fully functional debian box. Included additional packages are mainly ntpdate and ssh (server and client), but you can install what ever you need from debian repositories using apt-get!

Julien Lavergne provided a fix which isn’t yet available in the Ubuntu main repository but you can download a fixed version of the package from his PPA: 0.1.2-6~ppa6. Checkout this doc from launchpad to add a PPA and its key to your Ubuntu repositories.

BTW: NowPlayingScreenlet theme pack ships some really nice skins – Vinyl especially – to be untar in: /usr/share/screenlets/NowPlaying/themes

Sticky
Widget
Keep below

If as soon as you select the Widget settings the widget disappear it means that the Widget layer plugin is activated in your compiz fusion options. Inactivate this option in CompizConfig Settings Manager.
 
The goal of the widget layer is to have the widgets displayed on top of all your windows when pressing a special key – F9 is the default key.

Work around:

in skype’s options -> Sound Devices set the following:

Sound In: hw0
Sound out: pulse
Ringing: pulse

User’s $HOME/.dmrc file is being ignored. This prevents the default language and session from being saved. File should be owned by user and have 644 permissions. User $HOME directory must be owned by user and not writeable by other users.

to fix the permissions:

$ sudo chown -R $USERNAME: $HOME
$ chmod 755 $HOME
$ chmod 644 $HOME/.dmrc