Re: ndis0 no link on 6.3-RELEASE

Ted Mittelstaedt said:

I just setup my laptop with a wireless card a couple weeks
ago and FreeBSD 6.3-RELEASE. (it's an older Toshiba)

I went through a total of 5 different wireless cards before
I found one that I was able to get working ndis drivers from
ndisgen. Fortunately there's a used computer place near here
(freegeek.org) that had a box of pcmcia wireless cards of all
different makes and models, which kindly allowed me to plunk
down my laptop (which dual-boots between Windows 98 and FreeBSD)
and they have wireless. So I would pick a card out of their bin,
boot into Windows, download the Windows driver, make sure the
card worked under Windows, then boot into FreeBSD and mount
the Windows partition, copy over the Windows driver and inf
file to the FreeBSD side, run ndisgen and then try loading the
driver.

With some cards, the driver wouldn't even activate the card.
With other cards, the driver would allow me to list the wireless
nodes then panic the system when I tried associating.

The card that did work was a Realtek-based card. And, it did
not work with the most current Windows drivers from the Realtek
website, it worked with the Windows drivers that were from a couple
years ago. (I found this out quite by accident)

Fortunately, they DID also have a number of the Wavelan
cards - these are supported natively with the wi0 driver -
that worked out of the box. Those cards are only 802.11b
though so I kept at it with ndisgen and the newer cards.

The interesting thing is that the original wireless card I
had in the Toshiba - a Texas Instruments-based chipset model -
never really quite worked properly in the Toshiba under Windows.
I put it into a different laptop I owned - a Thinkpad, and
it worked great in that.

Unfortunately, in your case, nothing has changed with ndisgen
since 2006 (see http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/cvsweb.cgi/src/usr.sbin/ndiscvt/ )
so it's not that, it's something else in the system that changed.

Start with the basics. Copy your bcmwl5.ko into /boot/modules
then in loader.conf put bcmw15_load="YES" and reboot the system,
check dmesg, and see if it's even loading

Next put in /etc/rc.conf "ifconfig_ndis0="inet 192.168.1.1 ssid myssid"
and see if it even comes up at all and you can ping out (obviously
you will have to temporairly turn off wpa on your wireless node,
set the correct ssid, and set the correct IP address to hard-code an
IP address)

If that doesen't work, regen the bcmw15.ko file using the "old"
method:

# cp foo.sys foo.inf /sys/modules/if_ndis
# cd /sys/modules/ndis
# make; make load
# cd /sys/modules/if_ndis
# ndiscvt -i foo.inf -s foo.sys -o ndis_driver_data.h
# make; make load

You need to isolate the problem to see if the driver is simply
just not working at all under 6.3, or if it is working, but it's
a scripting or turnup out of sequence error. And you need to
see if wpa has anything to do with it.


Hi Ted. Thanks for the reply.

Unfortunately, until I either get time to resize my hard disk and add a
separate freebsd installation, or I figure out how to undo a
buildworld, looks like I'm stuck. It's my school laptop, so I kind of
need to get work done. ;) (I am able to run a 6.3-RELEASE kernel, but
the 'world' is 6.3-RC1.)

Regarding older drivers: Yes, I had this problem with my current
chipset in 6.2-RELEASE. This is why I was so surprised I had problems
with 6.3-RELEASE.

Either way, I appreciate your response.

Cheers.
--
Glen Barber
http://www.dev-urandom.com/
_______________________________________________
freebsd-net@xxxxxxxxxxx mailing list
http://lists.freebsd.org/mailman/listinfo/freebsd-net
To unsubscribe, send any mail to "freebsd-net-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxx"

Relevant Pages

  • Re: MCE TV and FM radio suddenly not working
    ... The problem is with TV Tuner/Video Capture card driver. ... I don't know which decoder ... Disk check ran when windows started up ...
    (microsoft.public.windows.mediacenter)
  • Re: SDSynchronousBusRequest taking long time
    ... Both are including SDCARD support and both are natively ... Here you can find some more boards with Windows CE ... You may need to sign your driver ... > card and load the driver dll. ...
    (microsoft.public.windowsce.embedded)
  • Need help chasing a weird problem
    ... I am having a weird problem with a somewhat exotic PCI device, ... driver has been ported from Windows. ... Windows, yet it consistently refuses to work ... Two of the three cards work, the third one (the last card on the ...
    (comp.os.linux.development.system)
  • RE: ndis0 no link on 6.3-RELEASE
    ... I have used more than one driver version, ... I just setup my laptop with a wireless card a couple weeks ... down my laptop (which dual-boots between Windows 98 and FreeBSD) ... The interesting thing is that the original wireless card I ...
    (freebsd-net)
  • RE: ndis0 no link on 6.3-RELEASE
    ... I have used more than one driver version, ... I just setup my laptop with a wireless card a couple weeks ... down my laptop (which dual-boots between Windows 98 and FreeBSD) ... The interesting thing is that the original wireless card I ...
    (freebsd-questions)