Driver for wireless dongle in FreeBSD

bsth123 · 03-29-2017, 08:19 AM

Hi, I'm completely new to FreeBSD but I needed something that would work on an old IBM Thinkpad and BSD was suggested. With a lot of googling and reading I successfully installed the i386, version 11 and have everything working except for wireless.

My chipset is well supported and I have spent at least four or five days researching why I can't get it working. This is the only thing that I've had help with. No luck My only guess at this time is that with such an old laptop that the chipset could be bad.

So I purchased a Ralink5370 wireless dongle which is supposed to be compatible with BSD. The only problem is I need a driver (I think) but almost everything I've read talks about recompiling the kernel to support it but these are old posts.

It is recognized when I boot up but doesn't try to load.

Here's the output of ifconfig

Code:

ge0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
	options=8009b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,VLAN_HWCSUM,LINKSTATE>
	ether 00:16:41:10:a8:27
	inet 192.168.0.15 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.0.255 
	nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
	media: Ethernet autoselect (1000baseT <full-duplex>)
	status: active
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
	options=600003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
	inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 
	inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2 
	inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000 
	nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
	groups: lo

Any help would be appreciated.

cynwulf · 03-29-2017, 08:52 AM

The output of ifconfig(8) shows that the wlan(4) device node alias hasn't been setup in rc.conf, or the if_run(4) module set up to load in loader.conf(5)

So this is really a repeat of what we've been through before in all of your other threads about supposedly non-functional hardware.

The manual pages for those and for run(4) will be helpful to you: http://www.unix.com/man-page/freebsd/4/if_run/

bsth123 · 03-29-2017, 09:01 AM

I've read that and your response is why I don't like to ask questions. I'm just going to keep working on my own. Thanks anyway

cynwulf · 03-29-2017, 09:13 AM

I've provided a clear and concise answer, to aid you in resolving this. But it's up to you if you choose to follow the advice or not. I also feel you're jumping the gun and coming to the 'defective hardware' conclusion far too readily.

If the answers you receive on this forum are not the answers you expect/demand, then there's going to be little anyone can do to assist you. The result will be that your posts/threads will simply get ignored - likewise on the FreeBSD forums or mailing lists.

bsth123 · 03-29-2017, 09:37 AM

I welcome the help but I tried everything you suggested and more on my wifi card and there were no typos or anything else that I did wrong. No one provided anymore suggestions and since I couldn't find anymore help I don't see what else I can do. If you have anymore suggestions on the wifi card I'd appreciate it. The dongle is a last resort. As far as the page you posted a link to I just don't understand it. Forgive me for my stupidity but this is all new to me and I think I have proven that I don't like to quit because I spend countless hours trying to find answers. I also don't understand why you make the comments you do. I'm really trying and for someone that only just started using linux I think showing the initiative to try BSD should as least get me a little more respect.

Also on another forum I posted on one time one of the admins told me that the only stupid question is the one not asked.

cynwulf · 03-29-2017, 09:51 AM

The page which I linked to has this highly relevant section:

Quote:

Alternatively, to load the driver as a module at boot time, place the following lines in
loader.conf(5):

if_run_load="YES"
runfw_load="YES"

Then you need to refer back here:

https://www.linuxquestions.org/quest...ml#post5688765

Follow my post from "And something like this in rc.conf" onward (you don't want modify loader.conf using the info in that post as that was related to a different wifi chip/driver).

Once you've done that reboot and you should now see a wlan interface when you run ifconfig again.

bsth123 · 03-29-2017, 12:48 PM

sorry it's taken so long to respond but I've been googling to try and see why this isn't working. No luck. One site said to try another version of bsd but I don't see how that would help. Sorry to continue to not succeed with your good advice.

replica9000 · 03-29-2017, 01:05 PM

Have you checked if there is an interfering module loaded, or if the wifi is soft blocked?

bsth123 · 03-29-2017, 01:43 PM

There was a possible conflict and I removed it with no luck. As far as I can tell no soft blocks. Remember this is new to me so I depend on google. Unfortunately there's not a lot on FreeBSD.

Emerson · 03-29-2017, 02:26 PM

First, I'd check if onboard wireless is functional with SystemRescueCD, I have the latest version always on a thumbdrive in my pocket.

bsth123 · 03-29-2017, 03:59 PM

It detected a wireless network but when I tried to configure it I couldn't. I'm not sure if that's normal with system rescue cd. I tried booting from the system rescue cd into FreeBSD and there was no wireless.

Emerson · 03-29-2017, 04:03 PM

So the onboard wireless is functional. What is the PCI ID of this device?

bsth123 · 03-29-2017, 04:40 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Emerson

So the onboard wireless is functional. What is the PCI ID of this device?

I hope this is what you mean

Code:

iwi0@pci0:4:2:0:	class=0x028000 card=0x10108086 chip=0x42248086 rev=0x05 hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = 'PRO/Wireless 2915ABG [Calexico2] Network Connection'
    class      = network

Emerson · 03-29-2017, 04:52 PM

Code:

lspci -nn
00:1f.6 Ethernet controller [0200]: Intel Corporation Ethernet Connection (2) I219-V [8086:15b8] (rev 31)

8086:15b8 is the PCI ID.

Emerson · 03-29-2017, 05:00 PM

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?...lt&format=html

Yes, it seems there is no FreeBSD driver for your card.

What is the USB ID of your dongle?