# Newbie help



## antkent (Mar 8, 2009)

Hi everyone, newbie to this forum and BSD in general.

Im trying to setup a FreeBSD wireless ap that will also be home to some 2tb of data. 'Cos im simply fed up with M$ useless sortware, and from what I have learned about FreeBSD I love!

Im using the Feb 09 snapshot of 8-current due to the AR5416 n-based wireless card im using.

whenever I try to config the card using ifconfig I get

ifconfig: SIOCSIFMEDIA (media): Invalid argrument

Also have a RT2528 based adapter, that gives the same results, so I am guessing that it isn't chipset related and me being stupid?

Any help appreciated.

Ant


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## pamdirac (Mar 8, 2009)

can you see the device in dmesg output?

If yes look this


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## Mel_Flynn (Mar 9, 2009)

Could you show what ifconfig line you use? obscure any keys. It might be the card doesn't support hostap mode, but let's see what you've come up with first.


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## SirDice (Mar 9, 2009)

As always the handbook provides quite a lot of information:
http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/network-wireless.html


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## Anonymous (Mar 9, 2009)

Try entering ifconfig on the command line by itself.
That should return something like this:

```
ath0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:17:3f:6c:92:07  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:15:58:2e:d5:c3  
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)
          Interrupt:16 

eth1      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:16:6f:9d:a7:07  
          inet addr:192.168.2.2  Bcast:192.168.2.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::216:6fff:fe9d:a707/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1492  Metric:1
          RX packets:852 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:821 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 
          RX bytes:131530847 (131.5 MB)  TX bytes:6231121 (6.2 MB)
          Interrupt:21 Memory:b4001000-b4001fff 

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback  
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:16436  Metric:1
          RX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:6 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:0 
          RX bytes:376 (376.0 B)  TX bytes:376 (376.0 B)

wifi0     Link encap:UNSPEC  HWaddr 00-17-3F-6C-92-07-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00-00  
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:81958 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:4635
          TX packets:1779 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:199 
          RX bytes:11093959 (11.0 MB)  TX bytes:81832 (81.8 KB)
          Interrupt:16
```

Now use the command 'ifconfig <interface> up scan'
but replace <interface> with each the interfaces (the things that look like eth0, ath0, etc),in turn, until one of them hooks up to your wireless router.

Now enter 'vi /etc/rc.conf'
and add a new line like: 'ifconfig_<interface>="ssid <your ssid> DHCP"

Save and quit.
Now enter '/etc/rc.d/netif start'
And your interface should connect.

This is what I have to do to connect, but I am new to this so I can't guarantee it will work for you. Good luck.


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## fronclynne (Mar 10, 2009)

If you're using 8, the syntax is a bit different from 7.x.

From /usr/src/UPDATING:

```
20080420:
        The 802.11 wireless support was redone to enable multi-bss
        operation on devices that are capable.  The underlying device
        is no longer used directly but instead wlanX devices are
        cloned with ifconfig.  This requires changes to rc.conf files.
        For example, change:
                ifconfig_ath0="WPA DHCP"
        to
                wlans_ath0=wlan0
                ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP"
        see rc.conf(5) for more details.  In addition, mergemaster of
        /etc/rc.d is highly recommended. . . .
```

I'm not really sure how this translates to setting these manually from the CLI.


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