Run PirateBox on your Laptop from USB [Linux PirateBoxLive]

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PirateBoxLive
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Don't want to mess up your computer trying to install PirateBox on it?
Want to be able to switch between PirateBox and Your normal OS?
Don't want anything related to PirateBox on your actual harddrive?
Still want Windows as your normal operating system?

Try PirateBoxLive

Salesmanship aside PirateBoxLive is a liveCD / liveUSB version of
PirateBox with everything you need including Pre-installed scripts
(By Matthias Strubel) and PirateBoxManager (By Cale Black)
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___________________________| Instructions |___________________________

### Windows ###
### It is suggested you print these instructions because you will have to do most of this offline ###

Step 1:

Download and Install UnetBootin

Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install unetbootin
Arch: sudo pacman -S unetbootin
etc.



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Step 2: Download the latest version of PirateBoxLive from this torrent or from GitHub

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Step 3: Select the ISO radio button and click browse. Select the pirateboxlive.iso you downloaded. And select the drive your USB stick is in.



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Step 4: When it is finished click reboot.

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Step 5: When your BIOS pops up hit the setup or configure key (normally F2 or Delete)

Step 6: Go to Boot (or Hard Drive Boot or Boot Sequence)

Step 7: Set the boot order to boot from USB drive first instead of hard drive (You may have to specifically select the USB device you have plugged in.

#Having issues with these steps?: More info can be found here, here, and here

Step 8: Reboot

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Step 9: It will boot into an Ubuntu distro and automatically log in and you should see this:



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Step 10: Click the terminal icon next to the Firefox icon and a command line will pop up like this:



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Step 11: Type in command line "PirateBoxManager" *without parentheses* and than hit enter. This is what your screen will look like:



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Step 12: Select option 1 by typing "1" *without parentheses* and hitting enter. This is what your screen will look like:



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CONGRATULATIONS!

You now have PirateBox running!

Feel free to play around with any of the options on PirateBoxManager (Built by me using Matthias's scripts) Some of these include:

Start PirateBox: Starts PirateBox #When PirateBox is running you cannot join other networks / connect to the internet#
Stop PirateBox: Stops PirateBox and allows you to connect to other networks
Manage Files: Opens up a file browser of the Share folder in PirateBox for you to delete / add things
Just Download the Scripts: Requires you to connect to the internet (not recommended for most users)
Config: A sub menu for quickly changing settings. It also has an option to clear the share folder

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Also, now when you run First Setup it copies shortcuts to start and stop piratebox to the desktop

that means that you can stop and start PirateBox just as easy as 2 clicks!

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Note: When you reboot into the USB drive you will have to run First Setup on PirateBoxManagers' options due to the fact that non of your changes will persist (This is the nature of LiveCD / US Although I am working on seeing if I can make a persistent version that saves all of your changes and even files (as long as the drive is large enough)
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12 Easy steps is now all it takes to get PirateBox for most laptop users now

A big shout out to Matthias Strubel who is the reason this got done
And another shout out to the rest of the PirateBox community who has gotten this to where it is. Who's awesome? You are.

Any Comments, Concerns, Criticisms, Suggestions, Fixes, etc. Please post them below.



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 04/12/2012 02:16PM by TerrorByte.

Downloaded the file and added to my bittorrent client.
I'm now seeding the file 24/7

Seeding right along with ya', matthias. Thanx to you and all the rest, who've gotten it to this point!

Wish I'd have discovered this project long ago!

I've installed it onto my USB and It launches fine, but when I run first setup in the pirate box manager it gives me this: "wlan0: error while getting interface flags no such device" and then setup fails. Any help would be appreciated.

Open up terminal and type

ifconfig

tell me what it prints, and also tell me your type and make of wireless card, thanks.

eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:14:22:8e:82:af
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 TX bytes:0 (0.0
Interrupt:18

eth1 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:13:ce:56:6d:01
inet addr:10.0.0.8 Bcast:10.0.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::213:ceff:fe56:6d01/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:27953 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:28561 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:24321826 (24.3 M TX bytes:15723030 (15.7 M
Interrupt:17 Base address:0x4000 Memory:dfbfd000-dfbfdfff

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:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:60 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:60 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:4120 (4.1 K TX bytes:4120 (4.1 K


It's an Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG

more interesting is the output of

# iwconfig

Here's iwconfig:

lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

eth1 unassociated ESSIDff/any
Mode:Managed Channel=0 Access Point: Not-Associated
Bit Rate:0 kb/s Tx-Power=20 dBm Sensitivity=8/0
Retry limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Power Managementff
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

Sorry about that, here it is easier to read:

Language: HTML
lo        no wireless extensions.
 
eth0      no wireless extensions.
 
eth1      unassociated  ESSID:off/any  
          Mode:Managed  Channel=0  Access Point: Not-Associated   
          Bit Rate:0 kb/s   Tx-Power=20 dBm   Sensitivity=8/0  
          Retry limit:7   RTS thr:off   Fragment thr: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

Exchange in /opt/piratebox/conf/piratebox.conf

Language: PHP
#----------------- Configuration for DNSMASQ & IF-Setup  -------------------#
# Name of the wlan interface
INTERFACE="wlan0"

to

INTERFACE="eth1"

and then restart it with

/opt/piratebox/init.d/piratebox stop
/opt/piratebox/init.d/piratebox start

Thanks! That worked great!

Hey,

I personally like to have my interfaces named right for other purposes as well. So e.g. don't have eth1 for a wireless interface but wlan0 instead etc. If you want to can change the interface name you can do it in

/etc/udev/rules.d/70-presistent-net.rules

Just change your current "eth1" entry to whatever you need, wlan0 for example.

Ubuntuhak, playing and tinkering with Ubuntu!

This is really awesome, and I appreciate what everyone involved has done. I'm having a problem doing the initial run. When I open the terminal and access the manager, I go to do First Setup and I get this:

Please enter your choice: 1
ln: creating symbolic link `/etc/init.d/piratebox': File exists
/usr/bin/PirateBoxManager: line 47: /etc/hosts: Permission denied
/usr/bin/PirateBoxManager: l
ine 48: /etc/hosts: Permission denied
network-manager stop/waiting
hostapd: no process found
dhclient: no process found 
* Starting script piratebox                                            
*   Setting up wlan                                           
 Bringing up wifi interface wlan0 
SIOCSIFFLAGS: No such file or directory
..failed 
 * failed setting up Interface

What could be causing this? If this has been addressed, please point me in the right direction. Thanks for your help.

cd /opt/piratebox
sudo bash PirateBoxManager

I believe.... I am at work atm but I will double check when I get home

Thanks for the prompt reply. It looks like it's not able to use my wireless card. When I do lspci it tells me that I have Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 3). It tells me that networking is disabled and when I try to enable it, it won't let me. Is the wireless hardware my problem?

I am heading back home from work atm, your best bet is to install the broadcom drivers through ethernet. I can't elaborate much as I am walking out the door.
Here is a link though: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/bcm43xx

I am also working on a fix for this in the next version, which has an annoying amount of delays.

TerrorByte Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I am heading back home from work atm, your best
> bet is to install the broadcom drivers through
> ethernet. I can't elaborate much as I am walking
> out the door.
> Here is a link though:
> [help.ubuntu.com]
> bcm43xx
>
> I am also working on a fix for this in the next
> version, which has an annoying amount of delays.

I decided to finally do a full install instead of live USB and eventually got it working going through those same steps. You guys are doing a great job, thanks for the help.

Sorry to make you have to install, I actually wonder why Broadcom breaks on a livecd.... oh well. Good to hear it works

Hi, I had the same issue as Distribution, however I cannot do a full install to the laptop I am using so I must run it off of a livecd. Is there a solution to this problem? Any information is appreciated. I greatly appreciate all the work that is being done for this project!

Gordyvision Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi, I had the same issue as Distribution, however
> I cannot do a full install to the laptop I am
> using so I must run it off of a livecd. Is there a
> solution to this problem? Any information is
> appreciated. I greatly appreciate all the work
> that is being done for this project!

You could do it on a separate partition and use it in dual boot mode, if that's possible for you. That's how I set mine up. So you still have your regular OS, with the option to boot into PirateBox.

That's a great idea! Thank you very much. I'll try that

Hmm. It didn't work even after installing on a separate partition. I'm not sure how to fix this problem, but I'm going to continue to work towards a solution, if anybody else figures it out, let me know

What's the problem? The same one with the Broadcom card? I forget exactly what I did, but I'm pretty sure I just hooked it up with a wire to the internet and installed the drivers. You just have to remember it's a proprietary driver, so you have to activate it separately.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 06/29/2012 02:48AM by Distribution.

It's the same problem and it doesn't detect ethernet. I plug it in and there's still no internet so I can't update the driver....if there's some way to manuall install the package required without internet, that would be one way to fix it.

There are some offline instructions here: [help.ubuntu.com].

It looks like you have to use the LiveUSB to do it.

HEY, YOU !!!!!! CAN I GET SOME HELP OVER HERE!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

doent work for me. tried it on 3 diffent pc from live cd. ! of 3 was a full install to hdd. I am able to see the BSSID, but i am not able to connect.

What do you mean? a little bit more info please Crooked.

Hey so instead of making a live USB out of this image I physically installed it to my USB I am currently updating it to ubuntu 12.04 will piratebox still work after upgrade?

Thank you for the reply TerrorByte. well, I downloaded the live iso via the torrent link. I burned it to a cd. I fully installed it on 2 older pc (P4 with 2 gig of ram 40 gig hhd) I also ran it Live on a Dell 630i. I have a xp laptop and an adroid device as well as an old windows 6.1 mobile phone in which i am using as clients to connect to the Pirate Box.
After I open terminal and type PirateBoxManager, I press 1 as said in the instructions, i go to my client devices and i see that the pirate box is broadcasting. I try to conect, the devices make the attempt to conect then it drops out. It seems that the PirateBox is not giving a ip address to the devices.

Thanks again for your reply.

Hello,
First I just wanna say I love you guys for putting the effort in for this. <333

My issue is the exact same as Anonymous' "wlan0: error while getting interface flags no such device"
I installed Piratebox because I know I'll be using it quite a bit, however I still don't quite understand the fix for this problem.

Can anyone shed some light?

Thanks