Re: Buffalo/Broadcom wireless N card

Previous thread: HAMMER update 12-May-2008 by Matthew Dillon on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 10:01 am. (1 message)

Next thread: HEADS UP - HAMMER on-media format changed 12-May-2008 by Matthew Dillon on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 2:33 pm. (1 message)
From: Walter
Date: Monday, May 12, 2008 - 12:37 pm

I'm trying to get a "Buffalo"/Broadcom wireless-N PC card
up and running; I'm intending to use it for a bridge.  In
contrast to FBSD (which I've already tried and failed to mod
to talk to this card), I found the device name on a DF page.
So I'm hoping DF supports it.

When I boot DF in the machine that has this PCI card installed,
the boot hangs after the "HOSTNAME" message, and I have to Ctrl-
C the thing for it to continue booting.  Then it starts emitting
error messages:

This one several times:

sm-mta[595]: deamon Deamon0: problem creating SMTP socket
sm-mta[595]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): opendeamonsocket: deamon Deamon0: 
cannot bind: Can't assign requested address.

And this one last:

sm-mta[595]: deamon Deamon0: problem creating SMTP socket
sm-mta[595]: NOQUEUE: SYSERR(root): opendeamonsocket: deamon Deamon0: 
server SMTP socket wedged: exiting

'pciconf -lv" returns this infomration on the card:

none0@pci0:0:10:0:    class=0x028000 card=0x03531154 chip=0x432914e4 
rev=0x01 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Broadcom Corporation'
    device     = 'BCM43XNG 802.11n Network Adapter'
    class      = network


Are the errors a result of trying to talk with this card?
Can someone direct me as to what to do?

Walter
From: Sepherosa Ziehau
Date: Monday, May 12, 2008 - 6:17 pm

-- 
Live Free or Die
From: Walter
Date: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 - 2:20 am

"BCM43XNG" is listed in here:
http://www.dragonflybsd.org/cvsweb/src/share/misc/pci_vendors.diff?r1=1.8&r2=1.9&a...
so maybe I was just hoping too much.

I'll turn back to FBSD to beat on that solution again
before I break down and buy a wireless-G solution.

Thanks.
From: Sascha Wildner
Date: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 - 2:28 am

share/misc/pci_vendors is for identifying PCI devices via the pciconf(8) 
utility. A device being listed there doesn't necessarily mean that a 
driver exists.

Sascha

-- 
http://yoyodyne.ath.cx
From: Sepherosa Ziehau
Date: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 - 3:05 am

If you want 11n support, you can use freebsd current; It has mwl(4),
which is well tested and supported.  Except for mwl(4), you can't find
other drivers in BSD/Linux world that support 11n, at least for now.

Best Regards,
sephe

-- 
Live Free or Die
From: Chris Turner
Date: Friday, May 23, 2008 - 7:09 pm

wasn't able to find a concrete reference to this in the fbsd sources - 
is this the correct driver name?

(cursed with a broadcom 11n card here too)

cheers

- Chris
From: Sepherosa Ziehau
Date: Friday, May 23, 2008 - 7:21 pm

On Sat, May 24, 2008 at 10:09 AM, Chris Turner

Grrr, sorry, it is not in freebsd CVS yet, you can try obtaining it
from freebsd p4 tree vap branch.  The driver's name is mwl(4).

Best Regards,
sephe

-- 
Live Free or Die
From: Chris Turner
Date: Friday, May 23, 2008 - 7:37 pm

aha.. cheers!

anyone know the current state of affairs w/r/t acpi suspend/resume on fbsd?

I'm loathe to have a non-bsd on my laptop & last I tried, netbsd wasn't 
really suspending on my hardware (acer F1000) .. at least SSD/Linux [1] 
is looking interesting as a bsd emulator in the meantime ..

.. [1] http://www.plathome.com/products/microserver/ssdlinux/

From: Walter
Date: Saturday, May 24, 2008 - 5:40 am

Fwiw, I solved this using FreeBSD's 'ndis' - DF maybe ought
to pull that in??

Here's my post to the FBSD Questions list giving the solution
I found (with the List's help), if you don't mind pulling in
the Windows XP driver:

---

The answer, maybe not the BEST answer, but the answer that
works, is to use the Windows XP driver and FBSD's 'ndis'.  My
goal was to build a FBSD router with wireless access to my COTS
wireless router to provide network access in another part of the house.

Get the driver files (.sys & .inf) either from the CD that came with
the card or from the Buffalo web site:
http://www.buffalotech.com/support/downloads/

Then, per instructions from the Handbook (11.8.2)
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/config-network-setup.html
run 'ndisgen' on the driver files:

# ndisgen netg300n.inf cbg300n.sys

A .ko file will be generated: cbg300n_sys.ko.  It can be loaded
using 'kldload ./cbg300n_sys.ko' but I wanted it loaded at boot.
So, as 11.8.2 says, copy this file to /boot/modules and add the
following line to /boot/loader.conf:

   cbg300n_sys_load="YES"

Also, as I wanted WPA encryption, I added two other lines to
loader.conf:
   wlan_ccmp_load="YES"
   wlan_tkip_load="YES"
The wireless setup instructions are in the handbook section 29;
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/network-wireless.html

Then in /etc/rc.conf add this:
   ifconfig_ndis0="WPA DHCP"
The device 'ndis0' is created by the ndis driver when it handles a
Windows driver.  I guess if you have more than one Windows
device and driver you get to sort out the various ndis0/1/2/3/4/5/etc.
If you don't want WPA just use "DHCP" and you don't need the
two extra lines above in loader.conf.

For WPA you need to create the WPA config file:
/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf:
   network={
      ssid="<your wireless network name>"
      psk="<your personal access key>"
   }

---

And then it should work.
Previous thread: HAMMER update 12-May-2008 by Matthew Dillon on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 10:01 am. (1 message)

Next thread: HEADS UP - HAMMER on-media format changed 12-May-2008 by Matthew Dillon on Monday, May 12, 2008 - 2:33 pm. (1 message)