nlutils-lp

A command-line utility that scans for Wi-Fi networks using the 802.11 netlink API and outputs the scan results in Influx Line Protocol format.

Typically, processes that need to gather data about nearby Wi-Fi networks would do a scan using iw and scrape its text output. However, it is generally a bad idea to try parsing another program's output if it is not designed to be consumed by other processes. The text may change with newer updates or simply by running the program on a different system.

With nlutils-lp, no more scraping is needed.

This is based on scandump by Adrian Granados from Intuitibits.

Features

nlscan-lp

Reports 802.11 scan results including BSSID, SSID, Frequency, Channel, and RSSI

nlassoc-lp

Coming Soon.

Reports BSSID, SSID, Frequency, Channel, and RSSI of the current association

Installation

# Install pre-requisites
sudo apt update
sudo apt install git libnl-genl-3-dev libpcap-dev

# Download, build, and install scandump
git clone https://github.com/bryanward-net/nlutils-lp.git
cd nlutils-lp
make
sudo make install

Usage

Usage: nlscan-lp <interface>
       nlscan-lp -v	Display version and exit

Where <interface> is the name of the WLAN interface (e.g. wlan0). Standard output is used to output the Line Protocol data.

The command must be run as root since only privileged processes can initiate a scan. A sudoers.d file is included to enable non-root users to run the command.

Example

Scan for Wi-Fi networks on wlan0:

$ sudo nlscan-lp wlan0