Kismet on Thinkpad R31 & SuSE 9.2

I'm trying, without much luck, to get Kismet running on my ThinkPad.
In /etc/kismet.conf, I have created a source line of
"source=hostap,wlan0,prsimsource" and also "enablesources=prismsource".
However, when I run kismet as root, I get the following:

Server options: none
Client options: none
Starting server...
Waiting for server to start before startuing UI...
Suid priv-dropping disabled. This may not be secure.
Enabling channel hopping.
Enabling channel splitting.
Source 0 (prismsource): Enabling monitor mode for hostap source interface
wlan0channel 6...
FATAL: channel get ioctl failed 22:Invalid argument


When I try as a user, I get:

Server options: none
Client options: none
Starting server...
Waiting for server to start before startuing UI...
Suid priv-dropping disabled. This may not be secure.
FATAL: Unable to set up pidfile /var/run//kismet_server.pid, unlink()
failed: Permission denied


Either way, I can't do anything.

Any ideas?

tnx jk