OSX: “station monitor” mode when using monitor=True

[gpotter2]

According to
calebmadrigal/trackerjacker#5 (comment)

The way we start monitor mode under OSX sets the interface into a weird pseudo-locked mode

In one terminal:

>>> import scapy.all as scapy
>>> scapy.sniff(iface='en0', prn=lambda p: p.summary(), monitor=True)

In another terminal (after running the above):

$ /System/Library/PrivateFrameworks/Apple80211.framework/Versions/Current/Resources/airport -I
     agrCtlRSSI: -62
     agrExtRSSI: 0
    agrCtlNoise: -93
    agrExtNoise: 0
          state: running
        op mode: station monitor
     lastTxRate: 216
        maxRate: 400
lastAssocStatus: 0
    802.11 auth: open
      link auth: none
          BSSID: 82:2a:a8:55:71:15
           SSID: colectivo
            MCS: 5
        channel: 157,1

As you can see, the op mode is station monitor. And when I try switching to a different channel, it doesn't work

[gpotter2]

Calling @guedou for OSX

[guedou]

Sorry for the looong delay. I do not boot macOS often ...

This behavior is expected that the station monitor mode is used to sniff raw 802.11 frames. Sniffing with tcpdump -I does exactly the same. When sniff() stops the mode goes back station.