Hello I don’t know where else to ask this so I’m just gonna ask it here. I really love dragonfly bsd but WiFi not working kinda defeats the purpose of a laptop.

Hello, I was wondering what the steps are to use WiFi on dragon fly bsd. I am running on a acer laptop (acer aspire e 15 576 392h) for some reason the only bad that runs on my laptop is dragonfly and I really like it except I can’t use wifi and only using Ethernet is a big downside for a laptop. A GUI WiFi would be even better. Thank you for any help.

The type of WiFi is 802.11ac or it says on the Amazon page. I tried the instructions on the site but nothing happened after doing them. I also have a TP link wireless adapter if that could be helpful. Any help would be strongly appreciated as this is the only thing holding me back from bsd. Thank you for any help.

so i think the problem is the driver for my wifi card.

i found this which should be the fix

IWM(4) DragonFly Kernel Interfaces Manual IWM(4)

NAME

iwm - Intel IEEE 802.11ac wireless network driver

SYNOPSIS

To compile this driver into the kernel, include the following lines in
your kernel configuration file:

device iwm
device pci
device wlan

You also need to select a firmware for your device. Use

device iwmfw

to include them all.

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

if_iwm_load="YES"
iwm3160fw_load="YES"
iwm3168fw_load="YES"
iwm7260fw_load="YES"
iwm7265fw_load="YES"
iwm7265Dfw_load="YES"
iwm8000Cfw_load="YES"
iwm8265fw_load="YES"
iwm9000fw_load="YES"
iwm9260fw_load="YES"

DESCRIPTION

The iwm driver provides support for:

Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 3160
Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 3165
Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 3168
Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 7260
Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 7265
Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 8260
Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 8265
Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 9260
Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 9270
Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 946X
Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 9560

iwm supports station mode operation. Only one virtual interface may be
configured at any time. For more information on configuring this device,
see ifconfig(8).

This driver requires the firmware built with the iwmfw module to work.

LOADER TUNABLES

hw.iwm.msi.enable
By default, the driver will use MSI if it is supported. This
behavior can be turned off by setting this tunable to 0.

hw.iwm.power_scheme
Power management scheme: 1 = active, 2 = balanced (default), 3 =
low power

hw.iwm.lar.disable
Allows disabling LAR (Location Aware Regulatory) feature: 0 = LAR
enabled if available (default), 1 = LAR disabled

EXAMPLES

Join an existing BSS network (i.e., connect to an access point):

ifconfig wlan create wlandev iwm0 inet 192.168.0.20 \
netmask 0xffffff00

Join a specific BSS network with network name "my_net":

ifconfig wlan create wlandev iwm0 ssid my_net up

Join a specific BSS network with 64-bit WEP encryption:

ifconfig wlan create wlandev iwm0 ssid my_net \
wepmode on wepkey 0x1234567890 weptxkey 1 up

Join a specific BSS network with 128-bit WEP encryption:

ifconfig wlan create wlandev iwm0 wlanmode adhoc ssid my_net \
wepmode on wepkey 0x01020304050607080910111213 weptxkey 1

DIAGNOSTICS

iwm%d: device timeout The driver will reset the hardware. This should
not happen.

iwm%d: firmware error The onboard microcontroller crashed for some
reason. The driver will reset the hardware. This should not happen.

iwm%d: fw chunk addr 0x%x len %d failed to load Timed out waiting for a
segment of the firmware to load. This should not happen.

iwm%d: could not read firmware %s (error %d) The driver failed to load
the firmware image using the firmware(9) subsystem. Verify the iwmfw(4)
firmware module is present.

iwm%d: Failed to start INIT ucode: %d An attempt to upload the INIT
firmware image to the onboard microcontroller failed. This should not
happen.

iwm%d: could not load firmware An attempt to upload the REGULAR firmware
image to the onboard microcontroller failed. This should not happen.

SEE ALSO

iwmfw(4), pci(4), wlan(4), wlan_ccmp(4), wlan_tkip(4), wlan_wep(4),
ifconfig(8), wpa_supplicant(8)

HISTORY

The iwm device driver first appeared in OpenBSD 5.7.

DragonFly 5.9-DEVELOPMENT March 20, 2020 DragonFly 5.9-DEVELOPMENT



i tried to follow this but it is confusing. could anyone give better instructions on how to load and use the 802.11ac adapter? thank you.

TL-WN823N is my usb wifi adapter. can i get this to work?

You should wait at least 24h before bumping your own thread, and only with new information added.
You are very impatient, and that's what you get for your impatience: someone who doesn't actually use BSD answering.

General advice that - I hope - is operating system agnostic:

• find out which device you actually have there
  
• find out which driver (probably FOSS) you need for it and how to make your system use that driver
  
• reboot
  
• if that isn't enough, find out what keeps it (Logs?). Maybe firmware? Firmware usually is NOT FOSS and needs to be installed in a different way.
  

Also keep in mind that a working wifi device does not guarantee a working internet and WWW connection.

sorry i wanted to get enough information out so that it could be answered

You can edit your post instead of adding a new one.

This has the added advantage that an unanswered question stays in zero reply status, where it will float to the top automatically for a few days.

So answering your own unanswered question actually has the opposite effect of a "bump".

PS: why is this marked [SOLVED]???

iwm(4) is the wrong driver (Intel). A quick search suggests that the device is based on the Realtek RTL8192CU chipset.

The driver you want is urtwn(4): https://man.dragonflybsd.org/?command=urtwn&section=4

RTL8192CU is listed.

Read the synopsis and you will see the two lines you will need in loader.conf(5)

For the firmware:

https://man.dragonflybsd.org/?command=urtwnfw&section=4

Again under the synopsis, you will also need to add those lines to loader.conf.

At that point you should be able to kldload(8) the modules - or just reboot - edit: or better still unplug and plug in as it's a USB device....

When it mentions the kernel configuration file is that referring to /etc/rc.conf? Thank you as I think this will work.

No that would be the kernel configuration. As you're not rebuilding the kernel to compile in the driver, but loading modules, you can disregard.