Monitor mode with TL-WN725N and 4.19.0 kernel

I'd like to use monitor mode and packet injection on my Kali linux VM running 4.19.0-kali5-amd64 kernel. I'm using a TP-Link WN725N v2 USB adapter (RTL8188EUS chip) and the default r8188eu driver doesn't allow it.

After googling a bit, I found this driver. After cloning the 5.2.2.4 branch, I ran make and make install without issues (the new driver is 8188eu.ko). The problem is, after running lsusb -t, the old r8188eu is still used, even if the newly compiled 8188eu is loaded :

# lsmod
Module        Size   Used by
8188eu     1830912   0
r8188eu     487424   0
lib80211     16384   1 r8188eu
cfg80211    761856   2 8188eu,r8188eu
...            ...   ...

So, how can I get the new driver to work with my adapter ? Did I do something wrong at compile time ?

Solution 1:

I'm the developer of the aircrack-ng rtl8188eus driver.

You have 2 versions of the same driver loaded. That doesn't work.

• r8188eu is lwfinger's standalone driver (a bit old too) which comes with kernels upstream

• 8188eu is our (aircrack-ng) and also newer then the other. The driver has monitor mode, frame injection, MESH support etc. See README.md.

According to our README.md, you need to blacklist the older "standalone" driver (by lwfinger) by adding a .conf file in /etc/modprobe.d (e.g: echo r8188eu > /etc/modprobe.d/realtek.conf) and then reboot in order to unload/blacklist it (or modprobe -r 8188eu)

Our drivers support a wide range of kernels and are heavily maintained. As of now, it supports the latest, v5.3+.