ifconfig shows wlan0 but airmon-ng won't start it

[rpilover]

I'm running Kali 1.06 on a Raspberry Pi with 2x identical USB WiFi NICs. wlan0 is for pentesting, wlan1 is set up as a WAP for SSHing in. Both NICs have been on my home network and work just fine, drivers and everything check out. I've even had airmon-ng airodump-ng and aircrack-ng working on this pi setup with these NICs before, but now something's wrong.

ifconfig:

root@kali:~# ifconfig
lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:1 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
          RX bytes:76 (76.0 B)  TX bytes:76 (76.0 B)

wlan0     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr --snip--
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

wlan1     Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr --snip--
          inet addr:10.0.0.1  Bcast:10.0.0.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::821f:2ff:feb5:adae/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:148 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:92 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:20317 (19.8 KiB)  TX bytes:16650 (16.2 KiB)

iwconfig

root@kali:~# iwconfig
wlan0     unassociated  Nickname:"<WIFI@REALTEK>"
          Mode:Auto  Frequency=2.412 GHz  Access Point: Not-Associated
          Sensitivity:0/0
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality:0  Signal level:0  Noise level:0
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

lo        no wireless extensions.

eth0      no wireless extensions.

wlan1     IEEE 802.11bgn  ESSID:"--snip--"  Nickname:"<WIFI@REALTEK>"
          Mode:Master  Frequency:2.412 GHz  Access Point: --snip--
          Sensitivity:0/0
          Retry:off   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr:off
          Encryption key:off
          Power Management:off
          Link Quality=67/100  Signal level=67/100  Noise level=0/100
          Rx invalid nwid:0  Rx invalid crypt:0  Rx invalid frag:0
          Tx excessive retries:0  Invalid misc:0   Missed beacon:0

airmon-ng fails to start, only references wlan1

root@kali:~# airmon-ng start wlan0


Found 2 processes that could cause trouble.
If airodump-ng, aireplay-ng or airtun-ng stops working after
a short period of time, you may want to kill (some of) them!
-e
PID     Name
1957    NetworkManager
2334    dhclient
Process with PID 1933 (dhcpd) is running on interface wlan1


Interface       Chipset         Driver

wlan1           Unknown                 rtl8192cu

root@kali:~#

contents of /etc/network/interfaces (and yes, wlan0 is set to DHCP even though it isn't connected to anything).

auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

auto eth0
iface eth0 inet manual

auto wlan0
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp

auto wlan1
allow-hotplug wlan1
iface wlan1 inet static
address 10.0.0.1
netmask 255.255.255.0

Wlan0 is certainly up, so why does airmon-ng only reference wlan1 when I tell it to "start wlan0"?

[soxrok2212]

So unless you're saying that you've had everything set up exactly how you wanted before, my guess would be that you can't load two instances of the same driver. Not sure about that but if they're both the same card, why don't you just use wlan1 for monitor mode and wlan0 for your WAP? Also, try plugging in one adapter, running airmon, and seeing if wlan0 comes up. If it doesn't the first time, plug in the other adapter.

[rpilover]

So unless you're saying that you've had everything set up exactly how you wanted before, my guess would be that you can't load two instances of the same driver. Not sure about that but if they're both the same card, why don't you just use wlan1 for monitor mode and wlan0 for your WAP? Also, try plugging in one adapter, running airmon, and seeing if wlan0 comes up. If it doesn't the first time, plug in the other adapter.

Interesting.... How would changing it to be wlan0=WAP/wlan1=mon fix it if the problem is two instances of the same driver?

[soxrok2212]

Interesting.... How would changing it to be wlan0=WAP/wlan1=mon fix it if the problem is two instances of the same driver?

Well that's why I said if you had it running fine before then you could just try changing which interface is acting as an AP and which is in monitor mode.

[rpilover]

Ah, no I've not had this working simultaneously as WAP and monitor. Both functions have worked, but only now am I trying them simultaneously.

Now I've removed wlan1 and commented out the wlan1 section of /etc/network/interfaces. Reboot, "airmon-ng start wlan0", and I get nothing under "Interface Chipset Driver", just blank. I'll try reversing the mon/WAP interfaces now and see if that helps.

[rpilover]

Yeah, now I've reconfigured it so wlan0 is the WAP and plugged wlan1 in for monitor mode ... but "airmon-ng start wlan1" won't put wlan1 into monitor mode, so it sounds like your idea is right on the money.

Is there maybe a way to have two copies of the driver in separate directories and have each interface refer to its own copy of the driver?