Thanks to the hard work of Foxtrot at Hak5, there are now official Kismet Makefiles for OpenWRT, and the packages are already included in the repositories for the Wi-Fi Pineapples!
For building in generic OpenWRT instances, read on…
Kismet tracks a lot of information about different networks and devices, which takes a lot of RAM. Most OpenWRT targets have very limited resources for flash and RAM and are not best suited for running Kismet. Usually, these devices are best suited for running the Kismet remote capture code, feeding packets to a full Kismet server on ‘real’ hardware.
It is possible to run a full Kismet server, and the package scripts provided attempt to disable the most memory-consuming aspects of Kismet while retaining functionality, however most systems running OpenWRT will run into limitations.
Check out a recent version of the OpenWRT/LEDE codebase:
$ git clone https://github.com/openwrt/openwrt.git
$ git clone https://github.com/kismetwireless/kismet-packages.git
We need to tell OpenWRT to pull the feeds into the build system. The feeds system includes many packages Kismet needs to compile. Change to the OpenWRT directory you checked out, and run:
$ cd openwrt
$ ./scripts/feeds update -a
$ ./scripts/feeds install -a
This will download all the third-party package definitions. They’ll be needed by the Kismet packages.
Copy, or symlink, the Kismet package definitions. From the openwrt directory you should already be in:
$ cp -R ../kismet-packages/openwrt/kismet-openwrt packages/
This assumes you checked out the kismet-packages repository in the same directory that you checked out OpenWRT; if you used a different directory, of course copy from there instead.
You will need to configure your basic options for OpenWRT, such as the processor and board. This needs to match the processor of the target system you are building packages for.
$ make menuconfig
Now we need to enable the Kismet package. In the OpenWRT config tool still:
Networkkismet.kismet option will be many possible sub-packages. Enable the packages you need as modules.Kismet is split into multiple packages to minimize the storage required; you can pick and choose what sub-packages you need:
kismet
The base Kismet server and WebUI. This is required for running a full Kismet instance, and is the most resource intensive. Many OpenWRT systems are not suitable for running a Kismet server, and are better suited running the remote capture tools.
To capture packets, you will need one or more of the kismet-capture-xyz packages.
kismet-manuf-database
The compressed Kismet manufacturer database allows Kismet to resolve MAC addresses to manufacturers. This package is only of use when running a full Kismet server.
kismet-icao-database
The compressed Kismet ICAO database is a very large dataset of ICAO aircraft registration. This package is only of use when running a full Kismet server, and using the ADSB SDR capture tool.
kismet-capture-linux-wifi
The Linux Wi-Fi capture driver for Kismet; this provides both local capture for a full Kismet server install, and remote capture for using an OpenWRT device as a capture node.
This is required to capture Wi-Fi packets on OpenWRT.
kismet-capture-linux-bluetooth
The Linux HCI Bluetooth capture driver for Kismet; this provides both local capture for a full Kismet server install, and remote capture for using an OpenWRT device as a capture node.
This is required to detect Bluetooth networks, and requires a HCI Bluetooth adapter.
kismet-capture-sdr-rtladsb
The ADSB capture driver for Kismet; this provides both local capture for a full Kismet server install, and remote capture for using an OpenWRT device as a capture node.
This is required to detect aircraft via ADSB, and requires a RTLSDR radio. This also requires python3 support, and can be quite resource intensive.
kismet-capture-sdr-rtlamr
The AMR capture driver for Kismet; this provides both local capture for a full Kismet server install, and remote capture for using an OpenWRT device as a capture node.
This is required to detect utility meters over AMR, and requires a RTLSDR radio. This also requires python3 support, and can be quite resource intensive.
kismet-capture-sdr-rtl433
The 433Mhz switch, sensor, thermometer, and related capture driver for Kismet; this provides both local capture for a full Kismet server install, and remote capture for using an OpenWRT device as a capture node.
This is required to detect multiple types of devices which can be seen with the rtl433 tool, including weather stations, TPMS sensors, thermometers, switches, and similar, and requires a RTLSDR radio. This also requires python3 support, and can be quite resource intensive.
kismet-tools
Assorted Kismet host tools for log manipulation and conversion; these are typically better run on a full system with more resources.
Assorted Python3 libraries
Some Kismet capture drivers use Python3 modules not currently present in normal OpenWRT feeds; package definitions for these modules are included in the kismet-openwrt packaging directory and are automatically enabled when one of the Kismet python3-based capture tools is selected.
Now we need to start the build process: It will take a while.
$ make
Depending on how many processors your system has, you can speed this up with
$ make -j$(nproc)
or similar.
If everything went well, you now have a bunch of packages to copy (or a firmware image to flash). They can be found in build_dir/target_[your target processor]. Remember you may need to copy many sub-packages to your device as well!