Using the Alfa AWUS036H

This (outdated) note is specifically for using this wireless adapter under Fedora 8 (kernel 2.6.26).

The mac80211 driver that comes with this kernel doesn't work very well and seems to hang at arbitrary moments. This has probably (hopefully) been solved in later kernels.

The patched aircrack driver described on this page is much better.

To get it to compile under Fedora 8 (kernel 2.6.26.8-57) make sure you have the accompanying kernel-devel package installed.

I did an extra check for old kernel-devel packages:
rpm -qa | grep kernel
and removed the old ones (using rpm -e with the full package name). Then I re-installed the current kernel-devel package (using rpm -ivh --force).

If you follow the instructions at the top of the aircrack page and use the 2.6.24 patch, you'll get lots of errors like this one:
ieee80211_wx.c:57: error: too few arguments to function 'iwe_stream_add_event'

Through trial and error I found that the 2.6.27 patch fixes things, so use that one instead:
wget http://patches.aircrack-ng.org/rtl8187_2.6.27.patch

Finally, as root, edit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist, and add the line:
blacklist rtl8187

After reboot, or modprobe r8187 you should be good to go. Let me know if things don't work for you.