# BWI driver and firmware



## Jaime Barcenas (Nov 12, 2015)

I'm having a hard time installing the driver and the firmware for my wireless card.

tThe driver I'm supposed to use is wbi, I can run the firmware in its folder with install but it does nothing to the card. I changed the /boot/loader.conf file as suggested in one page, added more call outs in /etc/r.c and /boot/sta(something)/loader.conf files and I still don't have a driver selected to my wireless card. cCan anyone help me? I'm a bit new to Unix, but took programming classes before and have an A+ cert,  so I know my way around the components but I just can find a way yet to get this card going


----------



## Juanitou (Nov 12, 2015)

Please provide more details on the card, relevant dmesg(8) and pciconf(8) output, content of the files you modified, etc.


----------



## Jaime Barcenas (Nov 12, 2015)

Using pciconf(8), I get the card with

```
none1@pci0? = class=? card=? chip=? rev=? hdr=?  
vendor    = 'Broadcom Corp'
device    = 'BMC43224 802. 11a/b/g/n'
class     = ???
subclass  = ???
```
It is not recognized by ifconfig(4)

I watched this video and followed their instructions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mm_PtuI-_tg

I also followed the steps in the FreeBSD manual: https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/network-wireless.html

Updated files:  /boot/loader.conf  and    /boot/defaults/loader.conf.

Created  files:  /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf and  /etc/rc.conf.

Following the instructions from the video and the FreeBSD manual wireless page,  I installed firmware for bwi(4) driver but after installing the firmware I still saw no changes to the card.

As I understand, if `ifconfig` does not see the card, then the files I updated and created can not give it instructions.

I used the bwi(4) firmware ( bwi-firmware-1.4p3 ) from the FreeBSD download page.

Did I used the wrong firmware package? What did I miss?


----------



## Jaime Barcenas (Nov 12, 2015)

The /boot/loader.conf   and /boot/defaults/loader.conf were updated with:

```
if_bwi_load=:YES"
```

/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf was created and it contains:

```
network={
ssid="myssid"
psk="mypsk"
}
```


----------



## wblock@ (Nov 13, 2015)

Jaime Barcenas said:


> The driver I'm supposed to use is wbi


Are you sure about that?  There is no wbi driver.  bwi(4) is for some pretty old Broadcom cards.



Jaime Barcenas said:


> /boot/sta(something)/loader.conf


No idea what that is about.



Jaime Barcenas said:


> /boot/defaults/loader.conf were updated with


The defaults file contains defaults, that's all.  It is not meant to be changed.

Broadcom wireless support on FreeBSD is poor, because Broadcom is not very smart about open source.  They do not release programming details of many of their cards.  Some other operating systems have paid programmers who can sign NDAs and get programming information.

On FreeBSD, the best supported cards are Atheros.  USB wireless cards supported by the run(4) driver can also work well.  Others are a mixed bag.


----------



## tobik@ (Nov 13, 2015)

Jaime Barcenas said:


> ```
> none1@pci0? = class=? card=? chip=? rev=? hdr=?
> vendor = 'Broadcom Corp'
> device = 'BMC43224 802. 11a/b/g/n'
> ...


That card is not supported by FreeBSD (see http://wiki.pcbsd.org/index.php/Wireless_Testing#Devices_that_need_a_FreeBSD_driver + the man pages). Neither by bwi(4) nor by bwn(4).


----------

