Alfa’s AWUS036NHR is Linux
compatible. It also works with Backtrack 5 (BT5), but is not plug and play. Driver
installation is needed (note: at this time it does not appear to be possible to
get AWUS036NHR into monitor mode AND have 802.11n capabilities at the same
time, see Alfa’s AWUS036NH or Rokland’s n3 for 802.11n and monitor
mode capability in Backtrack 5).
The following is a quick-install
guide for Linux users. This should allow you to use your AWUS036NHR for Wi-Fi
access in most recent Linux distributions running kernel 2.6.38, but as noted,
monitor mode does not appear to be supported by this driver. Further down we
have a link to a driver that is reported to allow you to use AWUS036NHR in
monitor mode, but the corresponding web page notes the device will only have
802.11g functionality.
To install your Realtek RTL8188RU based AWUS036NHR in Linux, first download the driver here. The following steps were taken on an HP laptop running Backtrack 5, but the steps should be similar for other recent Linux distros.
*If you are not able to unzip the driver download file in Linux, you will need to download the file to a Windows computer to unzip and then copy the contents to your Linux computer via flash drive or another method.
1. When you have the files
extracted on your Linux machine, open a terminal window and navigate to the
location of the drivers.
2. Type ./install.sh to install
the driver package
3. If installation completes
successfully, then you can connect the Alfa adapter to the computer and open
“Wicd Network Manager” from the Internet menu to connect to networks. Inside
Wicd, click Preferences and change the network device to the AWUS036NHR
adapter. If you are not sure of the device name, in a terminal window type
“iwconfig” without quotes and it will list it there. Commonly the device will
be called wlan0, wlan1, or wlan2 depending on whether you have other wireless
cards installed on the computer.
4. If you receive a makefile
error about “no rule to make target modules”, you may need to prepare kernel
headers. As root, at the command line run these commands (you will need to have
Internet access on the computer already):
prepare-kernel-sources
cd /usr/src/linux
cp -rf include/generated/* include/linux/
5. Upon completion, repeat step number 2 above to complete driver installation. Then connect the adapter to the computer and proceed to step 3.
URTWN Driver:
There is a driver called urtwn which specifies compatibility with RTL8188RU chipset-based devices, and allows for them to be put into monitor mode. The documentation for the driver explains that 802.11n functionality is not supported, so RTL8188RU devices will only operate in B/G mode. Rokland has not yet tried to use this driver with AWUS036NHR and is not able to offer installation assistance or support. You can visit this site for download information and more details:
http://resin.csoft.net/cgi-bin/man.cgi?section=4&topic=urtwn
Military and First Responder 
For later versions of the 2.6 kernel (as well as recent kernels), the smp_lock.h was removed. What used to be contained therein was moved into . To successfully install the ALFA drivers, however, it is necessary to take a couple of extra steps. This is taken from the most recent release of BackTrack R5:
1. (Optional, Recommended) Update and upgrade your distro via apt-get update and apt-get dist-upgrade
2. Go to /usr/src/linux and perform a ‘make modules’ (this generates the Modules.symvers file, along with compiling the kernel modules)
3. Unpack the ALFA driver ZIP file for Linux into some directory (e.g. unzip -xqo)
4. cd into the main Alfa directory, go into drivers
5. Edit the files (e.g. in vim)
driver/rtl8192_8188CU_linux_v3.0.2164.20110715/include/osdep_service.h
driver/rtl8192_8188CU_linux_v3.0.2164.20110715/include/rtw_io.h
and search for the #include for smp_lock.h (one in each file). Comment out or delete the line and save the files.
6. Rebuild the tar file in drivers:
tar zcvf rtl8192_8188CU_linux_v3.0.2164.20110715.tar.gz rtl8192_8188CU_linux_v3.0.2164.20110715
This is necessary as install.sh unpacks the source from there and will overwrite your changes if you don’t rebuild the archive
7. Return to the main directory and proceed with ./install.sh
At the end of this, you should have working ALFA drivers. The one thing I have not been able to do is use iwconfig to set the tx-power to anything other than default
I recommend a reboot after this, but rmmod / insmod will also work.
Happy BackTrackage!
My problem is I use this Alfa on VMWARE it works fine but only displays 802.11.n when I type wash -i mon0
any reasons why? it wont show 802.11.g
please help!
When you install driver for NHR on Win7, FIRST plug in NHR, THEN install driver. I tried it with BTR5 R3, somehow it monitors only channel 11 after I enter “airodump-ng mon0”
Is this article/blog still applicable to BackTrack 5 Release 3? I can’t seem to pick up station mac addresses. Thx.
AWUS036NHR works out of the box on BT5R2 with monitor mode??