# FreeBSD 10.3 - Intel® Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160



## akar134 (Jun 13, 2016)

Hi, 

I just want to ask how is it with support of Intel Dual Band Wireless-AC 3160 card under the FreeBSD 10.3 ? 

Is it supported or not ? I found that mentioned card is on the list of supported Hardware https://www.freebsd.org/relnotes/CURRENT/hardware/support.html.  There should be used iwm(4) driver. 

Unfortunately if I install the FreeBSD 10.3 there is no wireless card detected in ifconfig(8), but 
`pciconf -lv` show the card, but as a device none2.  

Is there any chance to compile or in some other way get the driver working ?

Thank you for the answers. 

Akar134


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## SirDice (Jun 13, 2016)

akar134 said:


> I found that mentioned card is on the list of supported Hardware https://www.freebsd.org/relnotes/CURRENT/hardware/support.html. There should be used iwm(4) driver.


This is the HCL for 11-CURRENT, not 10.3-RELEASE.


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## akar134 (Jun 13, 2016)

OK. So it means that there already exist a possibility to have the wifi card working. 

Is it possible to implement the 11-CURRENT driver to 10.3 Stable ? I means to transfer it from 11-CURRENT to 13.0 Stable. I guess that in 11-CURRENT the iwm is a kernel plug-in....

Thank you


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## SirDice (Jun 13, 2016)

akar134 said:


> Is it possible to implement the 11-CURRENT driver to 10.3 Stable ?


It may already have been MFC'ed, I didn't check.


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## kpa (Jun 13, 2016)

The iwm(4) driver is not yet in stable/10.

https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/stable/10/sys/dev/

Fyi, FreeBSD does not have "kernel plugins". All drivers such the mentioned iwm are initially built as loadable kernel modules that are loadable with kldload(8). Drivers that are mentioned in a kernel config(5) file are also linked to the main kernel image and are available without first loading them as modules.


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## akar134 (Jun 13, 2016)

Thank you. And is it possible to transfer the kernel module from 11.0-CURRENT to 10.3-STABLE? Will it work?

Is the kernel module for 11.0-CURRENT compatible with kernel which is used for 10.3-STABLE?


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## kpa (Jun 13, 2016)

No, you can't load kernel modules from a different major version, the so called KPI/KBI which is the kernel programming/binary interface is not guaranteed to stay compatible between major versions. You'll have to wait till the driver gets MFC'd (merged from current) to stable/10.


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## akar134 (Jun 13, 2016)

OK. And is it possible to compile the source code for iwm to have kernel module compatible with 10.3 ? I'm not sure if there is any...


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## tingo (Jun 13, 2016)

The source code is available (of course - it is part of FreeBSD). The last time I tried compiling iwm on FreeBSD 10.x it failed to compile. If you search this forum the forums, you can probably find the thread.


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## kpa (Jun 13, 2016)

You can always try to just copy the iwm directory to your source tree but there's no guarantee it will work, like I said kernel programming API might have changed drastically for FreeBSD 11 from 10.


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## akar134 (Jun 13, 2016)

Thank you for the reply. 

I'm thinking to install Debian ( where the card is recognized by iwlwifi binary firmare ) and run the FreeBSD in virtualized environment to get it working...


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## SirDice (Jun 13, 2016)

> There's no MFC planned because the driver isn't very stable yet.


https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base/head/sys/modules/iwm/?view=log


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## abishai (Jun 26, 2016)

Ooops, I ordered Intel 7265 and just 5 seconds ago found that driver is not stable  As there are alpha builds of 11-CURRENT already, can we expect that this driver will be included in the final release?


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