Just read a post where the fella said he was "losing sleep" regarding his problem. . .Well I don't sleep anymore since trying to configure my new 800 w/all the goodies I want!

I've tried a few sniffers. . .all are tar gz files which I am clueless as to why they won't load, (clue-less-ness not limited to just that), have had luck w/rpm files though. . .so downloaded a kismet.rpm...no-go.

Would someone plz point me in the direction of a place where 50+ yr old, DOS era, ex-hack, post-cerebral stroke guy can get a handle on this...emphasis on "post-stroke" difficulties ;-)!!
Whuzerd

#1 maemo is debian base so it does not take .rpm installers.
#2 It takes .deb installers
#3 You need Kismet you can install kismet by using the application manager

The generic way to install applications on the N800/770 is to add repositories to the existing list of repositories in the Application Manager, and install from the list of applications you find there. The reason to add repos is to get access to even more applications.

The second-best *) way (when the app. in question isn't available in a repo) is to use the tablet to access e.g. maemo.org and find those one-click installation icons.

The third-best way is to find the .deb in question, download it, and use the application manager to install from file.

The fourth best way.. well, let's not go there yet.

And kismet can be installed from a repo, unfortunately I don't remember the URL but it can be found by searching the forum. (There are too many repos for the N800 and 770, and obviously anyone can add repos as much as they want, but this is one area where a future concolidation of repos will improve and ease the situation).

EDIT: *) In some ways the one-click way is the best way, as it's sometimes the simplest way to get the correct repository added to your device.

One good place to find repos is on the maemo wiki page for repositories. To add them, just go to the application manager, then pull down the menu, select Tools|Application Catalog, click new, and add the URL and other info as posted on the wiki page.

Now, as to kismet, if you're using the latest firmware on your N800, kismet scans for about 10 seconds and then stops. As far as I've been able to determine there is no fix for that at this point. If you're using the previous firmware, kismet works well, but video playback on the older firmware is not as smooth. See this thread, this thread, this thread, and finally, this thread for more details. I'm no guru, but it seems to be a kernel issue rather than a user-space issue, and as I said, no one has figured out a fix at this point that I've heard of.

Aircrack-ptw and tcpdump are available from various repositories. Aircrack-ng is available also, search the forums for a link to the .deb file.