Algunas repercusiones urbanas

Kismet is installed from “source code.” Source code is text files that tell the compiler program how to build the actual Kismet program itself. To get started on the installa- tion, you need to log into your laptop as the root user. Then, download the latest source code from www.kismetwireless.net. Follow the links to the download page, and get the latest “Stable Source Release.” (See Figure 2.1.)

such as Red Hat’s Fedora also make their software available in pre-compiled binary formats. Since they were originally made for use with the Red Hat Package Manager, these packages are called RPM files. Users of such distribu- tions may also be unfamiliar with how to compile and install under a “stan- dard” distro. For those of you who are new to the compiling and installation cycle, here is a brief overview of installing Linux programs from source code and cover the needed commands.

The standard way to compile source code into an executable program is done via a series of three main commands: configure, make, and make install. Briefly, these commands tell the compiler, a program that constructs other programs, how to go about building the desired software package.

Configure This command, usually run as ./configure due to the way Linux is normally set up, tells the compiler what options are needed for the next step, and where to find the various sources of informa- tion that are needed to build the desired program. It is not uncom- mon to add your own options to the configure command.

Make The make command is the step where the various options are used to actually create the executable binary program. Typically,

make is the longest part of the creation cycle.

Make Install The make install command is used to install all the vari- ous parts of the software into the appropriate directory locations on the laptop.

Some other steps such as make dep in which dependant programs are created, may be required for installation of some software packages. Such steps may be intermediary to the configure, make, and make install commands.

If you are having trouble getting a program to install and run under any Unix-like OS, the first place you should look is within the uncompressed source code directory. Most programmers will include what is known as a “README” file, usually named “README.TXT” or something very similar. Most README’s will tell you what needs to be done to install a program, including some of the more common procedures that need to be completed prior to installation.

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As of this writing, the latest stable release is kismet-2007-10-R1. It was issued on Monday, October 8, 2007. Kismet’s release version follows a naming convention of: kismet-yyyy-mm-Rn.tar.gz

where: Yyyy = year Mm = month

Rn is the revision number.

You should make sure that you download the latest stable release, as it will have the most up-to-date code and bug fixes.

For those new to Linux, the file extension of tar.gz indicates that the file is a type known as a “tar” or Tape ARchive (from an old name convention, when tapes were commonplace for storing archives), and that it is compressed using the GNU Zip compression utility.

We recommend that you place the downloaded file into the directory /usr/src, which is the normal folder to place Linux source code files. To get to the /usr/src

folder, enter this command at the CLI:

cd /usr/src

Next we’ll extract the Kismet source code files. This is done using the command: tar –zxvf kismet-2007-10-R1.tar.gz

This command tells the tar program to pull the component files from the archive file. Specifically, the z tells tar that the component files were compressed using gzip. The x tells it to perform the extract function, while the v means that tar is to be verbose, or give information to the user about what it is doing as it performs the file extraction. Finally, f is used to force overwriting, which means that if a file was already extracted with that name, tar will write over it with the new file from the archive.

Once this command is entered on the command line, the tar program creates a new sub-directory following the same naming convention. In this case, the sub-directory name will be kismet-2007-10-R1. Following that, the program quickly extracts over 150 files and 8 additional folders into the newly created Kismet source code folder.

Figure 2.2 shows the archive being extracted into the source code directory

Change to the new sub-directory. It will have the same naming convention as the source code tar.gz file, and it will have the name /usr/src/kismet-yyyy-mm-Rn based on the year, month, and revision number.

cd /usr/src/kismet-2007-10-R1

The next step is to run the configure command. This is run by typing: ./configure

Note the “./” in front of the command. If you’re new to Linux, make sure you type the period and the forward slash in front of this command. It has to be there due to the way the command functions and where it is located in the Linux directory paths.

At this point, you should watch the output scrolling by on the screen. You don’t have to pay rapt attention to it, as it may be too fast to follow. However, if Kismet runs into any problems, such as not finding the libraries or other development pack- ages that it needs to run, this is where the error messages will appear. In Figure 2.3

you can see the configure command being run, and how the output will appear.

When it finishes, the configure command will give a summary of how it ran, and what libraries were installed. A typical summary is illustrated in Figure 2.4. If additional libraries are missing from your computer, you will most likely see error messages listed here saying which libraries are missing. Missing file libraries are a common cause of

make failures. If any libraries are missing, you will need to download and install them, and then run the configure command again.

Now you need to execute three commands in succession. They are make dep, make, and make install. All three are run from the CLI. Run them one at time, letting the output from each one complete before executing the next command.

make dep make

make install

Each one of these commands will produce some output on the screen. The output for each command will all differ to some extent, but they will look similar to the output screen in Figure 2.5.