Pineapple Mark VII with 5Ghz adapter setup

About 

I will explain how to setup a compatible 5GHz adepter to work with Pineapple Mark VII. The list of compatible adepters is available here. I purchased Alfa AWUS036ACM from Amazon.

Before we begin, please refer to this article to understand which configuration files to edit and how to create backup for existing files. Below you will the complete configuration.

Configuration

Login to Pineapple via SSH and backup the original 2G configuration as per the article above:

$ ssh root@172.16.42.1

Insert the USB adapter into the Pineapple and locate it, it should be on WLAN3.

root@mk7:~# lsusb
root@mk7:~# airmon-ng
root@mk7:~# airmon-ng | grep MediaTek # AWUS036ACM

Now we need to configure Pineapple to use the new 5G interface instead of the default WLAN1 which only supports 2GHz. We will edit 3 configuration files to apply the changes as per the article above. Note, you do not need to follow the article instructions to change these files as the below configuration is all you need to update.

wireless

Edit "/etc/config/wireless" configuration file and find where "wlan1" is configured. You should only change "channel", "hwmode", "path", "ifname" as follows and leaving everything else the same:

config wifi-device 'radio1' # do not touch (must match with below)

    option channel '44'

    option hwmode '44a'

    option path 'platform/101c0000.ehci/usb1/1-1/1-1.3/1-1.3:1.0'

config wifi-iface

    option device 'radio1' # do not touch (must match with above)

    option ifname 'wlan3'

channel - can be anything of 5G channel range.
hwmode - suffix "a" for 5G.
path - needs to change as your adepter is connected to its own USB slot. WLAN1 on USB 1-1, WLAN2 on USB 1-2, thus WLAN3 is probably on USB 1-3.
ifname is the adapter.

pineap

Edit "/etc/config/pineap" configuration file. You should only change "ap_channel", "pineap_interface" as follows and leaving everything else the same:

option ap_channel '44'

option pineap_interface 'wlan3mon'

ap_channel - match to what is configured in "wireless" section above.
pinap_interface is the adapter.

pineapd

Edit "/etc/init.d/pineapd" configuration file. You should change all occurrences of "wlan1" to "wlan3" and "wlan1mon" to "wlan3mon":

uci set pineap.@config[0].pineap_interface='wlan3mon'

ifconfig wlan3mon &>/dev/null || airmon-ng start wlan3 &>/dev/null

Testing

After rebooting your Pineapple Mark VII, login to its WEB interface on http://172.16.42.1:1471

In the Recon section where the Scanning takes place, you should see that the Scan has a new 5 GHz option available! 

You may also try the following in SSH terminal (WEB Terminal provies no output, SSH to the device). Output should capture access points on channels from 36 to 48.

root@mk7:~# airmon-ng    # ensure 5G adapter is on wlan3
root@mk7:~# airmon-ng start wlan3

root@mk7:~# airodump-ng wlan3mon --band a --channel 36-48

Then notice 5.2 GHz on wlan3:

root@mk7:~# iwconfig wlan3mon
wlan3mon  IEEE 802.11  Mode:Monitor  Frequency:5.2 GHz  Tx-Power=20 dBm

Conclusion

Pineapple Mark VII only sopports 2GHz out of the box which is outdated, people are connected to 5GHz WiFi networks. There is very little help on how to setup and configure a 5GHz adapter for Pineapple. I hope this blog helps others who want to make their Pineapple to support 5GHz.