airmon ng ls: cannot access '/sys/class/ieee80211/': No such file or directory

Question

Im using ubuntu bionic (UBUNTU WSL)

I can't use airmon-ng!

It throws the following

ls: cannot access '/sys/class/ieee80211/': No such file or directory

I checked airmon-ng: ls: cannot access '/sys/class/ieee80211/': No such file or directory no fix

iwconfig

eth0      no wireless extensions.

eth1      no wireless extensions.

eth2      no wireless extensions.

eth3      no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

wifi0     no wireless extensions.

wifi1     no wireless extensions.

I have a wifi card and latest aircrack-ng, no fix

airmon-ng check kill

ls: cannot access '/sys/class/ieee80211/': No such file or directory

this is the output

airmon-ng wifi0

ls: cannot access '/sys/class/ieee80211/': No such file or directory


PHY     Interface       Driver          Chipset

the same thing

Answer 1

WSL does not have a real Linux kernel. It is an emulation of the Linux services on top of the Windows HAL.

As such low level utilities such as airmon-ng won't work. I also have honest doubts iwconfig will fully work - the WiFi/network configuration is done on the Windows side.

For more details, see SSH In Windows 10 Bash(Ubuntu) and Attempting to run a regular tunnel in Debian version 9.5 Linux