# How to setup Network on Dell Latitude E5420?



## DaveedMee (Nov 10, 2021)

Hey y'all,

I'm new to BSD and have just installed FreeBSD and KDE Plasma on my Dell Latitude E5420.

My wifi is not working, but LAN is. I've read that my wifi card is not supported by FreeBSD (Broadcom) but that it could possible to create the drivers myself using XP drivers and ndisscvt. I got the .inf and .sys file of the device driver and I've read the manual but I feel like I am not any smarter after that. Can someone please guide me through and explain it to me as I were five?

Thanks in advance.



Device Info

Model: Dell Latitude E5420 (refurbished)

OS: FreeBSD 13.0 (KDE Plasma 5.22.5)

Wifi card in question: Dell DW 1530  802.11n 1JKGC BCM43228 WiFi MiniPCI Express Dualband, and it also shows up as BCM43228.

As I said, I have Windows drivers for this device. LAN works and is listed as bge0, and I think my wifi is listed as bge0:none. At least I think that is my wifi.


Once again: Thanks in advance!


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## SirDice (Nov 10, 2021)

DaveedMee said:


> I've read that my wifi card is not supported by FreeBSD (Broadcom) that it could possible to create the drivers myself using XP drivers and ndisscvt. I got the .inf and .sys file of the device driver and I've read the manual but I feel like I am not any smarter after that. Can someone please guide me through and explain it to me as I were five?


Yeah, ndisgen(8), honestly, not worth the trouble. Pick up a cheap USB wireless dongle you know is supported.


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## DaveedMee (Nov 10, 2021)

SirDice said:


> Yeah, ndisgen(8), honestly, not worth the trouble. Pick up a cheap USB wireless dongle you know is supported.


Yeah I figured that already, but I really don't want to spend money on a laptop I barely use anyway. Just hoped to get it to work with ndisgen. If that won'T work I might just switch back to Linux and come back when the next version releases. I know that probably won't help the community here but idk. Was kinda hoping to get it to work with the hardware I already have and maybe give the community here the drivers if anyone needs them as well? Honestly no idea about the ifs and hows but reading about ndisgen just seemed like a nice feature to have


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## SirDice (Nov 10, 2021)

ndisgen(8) is a neat trick, but it just doesn't work as intended. I don't think there's anything wrong with the tool (or the idea) itself, just that the windows drivers tend to be rather dodgy. It doesn't matter how great the tool is, if you put garbage in, garbage will come out.


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## DaveedMee (Nov 10, 2021)

SirDice said:


> ndisgen(8) is a neat trick, but it just doesn't work as intended. I don't think there's anything wrong with the tool (or the idea) itself, just that the windows drivers tend to be rather dodgy. It doesn't matter how great the tool is, if you put garbage in, garbage will come out.


How do you mean, '_it doesn't work as intended_'? The way I see it, is, either my wifi will work or it won't. The state of it now is that it doesn't. So I don't really have anything to lose trying, have I?
I would've tried ndisgen(8) already but I don't really get how to use it


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## SirDice (Nov 10, 2021)

DaveedMee said:


> I would've tried ndisgen(8) already but I don't really get how to use it


What part of it aren't you getting? It's an interactive script, just run it, answer the questions it asks and see how far it gets you.


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## DaveedMee (Nov 10, 2021)

SirDice said:


> What part of it aren't you getting? It's an interactive script, just run it, answer the questions it asks and see how far it gets you.


Okay, I have the drivers in my home directory and the console is opened in there too.

I typed:
ndiscvt -O -i bcmwl6.inf -s bcmwl6.sys -n BCM43228 -o -

It gives me the following:
ndiscvt: line 13: e: syntax error.

What did I do wrong?


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## SirDice (Nov 10, 2021)

DaveedMee said:


> What did I do wrong?


Use ndisgen(8).


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## DaveedMee (Nov 10, 2021)

SirDice said:


> Use ndisgen(8).


Okay this seems to be easier. But now I am stuck at the Kernel module generation:

Building kernel module... make: "usr/share/mk/bsd.sysdir.mk" line 15: Unable to locate the kernel source tree. Set SYSDIR to override.
build failed. Exiting.

What went wrong?


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## wb7odyfred (Nov 28, 2021)

Example:  _SYSDIR_="/usr/src11/sys"
you specify where the system directory is located  ie  '/usr/src/sys"

You can checkout the sources with either SVN or Git:  SVN is being deprecated

```
svnlite co https://svn.freebsd.org/base/releng/11.0 /usr/src
```
or

```
git clone --single-branch -b releng/11.0 https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd /usr/src
```

It looks like you either don't have the kernel source code installed, or have it installed in an unusual place. On a FreeBSD system the source is typically in /usr/src/sys/, but I don't know exactly how PC-BSD handles FreeBSD source code.

 I have defined _SYSDIR_ with set _SYSDIR_=/path/to/10.1 and setenv _SYSDIR_ /path/to/10.1...
export SYSDIR


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