Running airodump-ng from script

Question

I am trying to write a script that runs airodump-ng. I use the command:

timeout -sHUP 1m airodump-ng -d MYBSSID -w wpahandshake wlan0mon

when I run it from the command line it works but when i run it from a script it creates a empty .cap file. Do someone have an explanation to why and a solution?

Answer 1

This is a bug existing in airodump-ng 1.2 rc4 (Released 14 Feb 2016) to airodump-ng 1.2 (Released 15 Apr 2018).

But in 18 Apr 2018, the GitHub user Mister-X fixed the problem. See the commit.

In src/airodump-ng.c with the bug, it will use input_thread() to create a thread regardless of whether the airodump-ng process running in the foreground or background.

The input_thread() will call mygetch(). And the mygetch() will call getchar(). Thus airodump-ng process will read stdin when running in the background.

In Linux, if a process reads stdin when running in the background, it will be stopped. And running timeout without --foreground option will let the COMMAND, here is airodump-ng, run in the background. So in this situation, the airodump-ng will be stopped and create a empty .cap file (asked by you).

There are two lines of thinking to solve your problem:

1. Let the airodump-ng run in the foreground by using --foreground option of timeout or running source <your_orignal_script.sh>.

2. Don't let the airodump-ng read stdin when running in background by redirecting stdin to /dev/null, timeout -sHUP 1m airodump-ng -d MYBSSID -w wpahandshake wlan0mon < /dev/null or downloading the newest source code without the bug from GitHub then compile and install it.