After about 7 years of service (including rebuilding FreeBSD stable & head daily), I replaced my dell Precision M4400 laptop with a Dell Precision 4800.
The transition is mostly complete, though it's had a bit of turbulence
at times.
One of the issues was that I found the provided WLAN device:
none1@pci0:3:0:0: class=0x028000 card=0x00171028 chip=0x43b114e4 rev=0x03
hdr=0x00
vendor = 'Broadcom Corporation'
class = network
completely unusable -- I was unable to get a driver to recognize it.
So I swapped WLAN devices with the old M4400; the M4800 now has:
iwn0@pci0:3:0:0: class=0x028000 card=0x13218086 chip=0x42328086 rev=0x00
hdr=0x00
vendor = 'Intel Corporation'
device = 'WiFi Link 5100'
class = network
I find that this (iwn(4) device):
* Works a bit better in the M4800 than in the M4400. I suspect
that after 7 years of fairly heavy use, including transport on
my bike when I was commuting to & from my former employer, may
have helped some connections to get a bit flaky: I had noticed
that in the last year or so, the WiFi connection was flaky enough
that I could no longer reasonably expect to arise in the morning
and expect that the laptop would have updated its local private
mirror of the SVN repo, for example (so I reverted to using the
wired NIC). I still see that to some extent for the M4800, but
rather less frequently.
* Completely fails to associate when running head (@ r280342 or
r280361). And yes, /etc/{rc,wpa_supplicant}.conf are identical
in the 2 environments. stable/10 was @ r280343 & r280356,
respectively (though I suppose "is" would be a better tense in
the latter case).
Caveat: the laptop arrived with BIOS A11 installed. One of the first
things I did was swap out the disk drive, both to leave it pristine in
case I needed to send the machine in for repair, and to replace it with
a larger, faster drive. (I thought this was worth the ~$85 or so.) I
have since found that BIOS A13 is available, and purportedly addresses
some keyboard issues when running non-MS OSes (which I believe I've
experienced). It is certainly plausible that updating the BIOS will
have other effects; some of those might actually be good (or at least
useful). I'm working on figuring out how to perform the update while
trying to minimize the probability of bricking the machine.
Here's an excerpt from a verbose boot of head, showing info about the iwn(4)
device:
...
pcib3: <ACPI PCI-PCI bridge> irq 18 at device 28.2 on pci0
pcib0: allocated type 3 (0xf7000000-0xf70fffff) for rid 20 of pcib3
pcib3: domain 0
pcib3: secondary bus 3
pcib3: subordinate bus 3
pcib3: memory decode 0xf7000000-0xf70fffff
pci3: <ACPI PCI bus> on pcib3
pcib3: allocated bus range (3-3) for rid 0 of pci3
pci3: domain=0, physical bus=3
found-> vendor=0x8086, dev=0x4232, revid=0x00
domain=0, bus=3, slot=0, func=0
class=02-80-00, hdrtype=0x00, mfdev=0
cmdreg=0x0006, statreg=0x0010, cachelnsz=16 (dwords)
lattimer=0x00 (0 ns), mingnt=0x00 (0 ns), maxlat=0x00 (0 ns)
intpin=a, irq=10
powerspec 3 supports D0 D3 current D0
MSI supports 1 message, 64 bit
map[10]: type Memory, range 64, base 0xf7000000, size 13, enabled
pcib3: allocated memory range (0xf7000000-0xf7001fff) for rid 10 of pci0:3:0:0
pcib3: matched entry for 3.0.INTA
pcib3: slot 0 INTA hardwired to IRQ 18
iwn0: <Intel WiFi Link 5100> mem 0xf7000000-0xf7001fff irq 18 at device 0.0 on
pci3
iwn0: attempting to allocate 1 MSI vectors (1 supported)
msi: routing MSI IRQ 269 to local APIC 0 vector 65
iwn0: using IRQ 269 for MSI
iwn0: MIMO 1T2R, MoW, address 00:24:d6:7a:03:ce
iwn0: 11a rates: 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps
iwn0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps
iwn0: 11g rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps
36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps
iwn0: 1T2R
iwn0: 11na MCS 20MHz
iwn0: MCS 0-7: 6.5Mbps - 65Mbps
iwn0: 11na MCS 20MHz SGI
iwn0: MCS 0-7: 7Mbps - 72Mbps
iwn0: 11na MCS 40MHz:
iwn0: MCS 0-7: 13.5Mbps - 135Mbps
iwn0: 11na MCS 40MHz SGI:
iwn0: MCS 0-7: 15Mbps - 150Mbps
iwn0: 11ng MCS 20MHz
iwn0: MCS 0-7: 6.5Mbps - 65Mbps
iwn0: 11ng MCS 20MHz SGI
iwn0: MCS 0-7: 7Mbps - 72Mbps
iwn0: 11ng MCS 40MHz:
iwn0: MCS 0-7: 13.5Mbps - 135Mbps
iwn0: 11ng MCS 40MHz SGI:
iwn0: MCS 0-7: 15Mbps - 150Mbps
And "ifconfig -v wlan0" output under stable/10:
g1-254(10.1-S)[6] ifconfig -v wlan0
wlan0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
ether 34:e6:d7:3c:4a:93
nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet MCS mode 11ng
status: associated
ssid lmdhw-net channel 1 (2412 MHz 11g ht/20) bssid 04:18:d6:22:22:1f
regdomain 0 country US anywhere -ecm authmode WPA2/802.11i -wps -tsn
privacy ON deftxkey UNDEF
AES-CCM 2:128-bit powersavemode OFF powersavesleep 100 txpower 15
txpowmax 50.0 -dotd rtsthreshold 2346 fragthreshold 2346 bmiss 10
11a ucast NONE mgmt 6 Mb/s mcast 6 Mb/s maxretry 6
11b ucast NONE mgmt 1 Mb/s mcast 1 Mb/s maxretry 6
11g ucast NONE mgmt 1 Mb/s mcast 1 Mb/s maxretry 6
turboA ucast NONE mgmt 6 Mb/s mcast 6 Mb/s maxretry 6
turboG ucast NONE mgmt 1 Mb/s mcast 1 Mb/s maxretry 6
sturbo ucast NONE mgmt 6 Mb/s mcast 6 Mb/s maxretry 6
11na ucast NONE mgmt 12 MCS mcast 12 MCS maxretry 6
11ng ucast NONE mgmt 2 MCS mcast 2 MCS maxretry 6
half ucast NONE mgmt 3 Mb/s mcast 3 Mb/s maxretry 6
quarter ucast NONE mgmt 1 Mb/s mcast 1 Mb/s maxretry 6
scanvalid 60 bgscan bgscanintvl 300 bgscanidle 250
roam:11a rssi 7dBm rate 12 Mb/s
roam:11b rssi 7dBm rate 1 Mb/s
roam:11g rssi 7dBm rate 5 Mb/s
roam:turboA rssi 7dBm rate 12 Mb/s
roam:turboG rssi 7dBm rate 12 Mb/s
roam:sturbo rssi 7dBm rate 12 Mb/s
roam:11na rssi 7dBm MCS 1
roam:11ng rssi 7dBm MCS 1
roam:half rssi 7dBm rate 6 Mb/s
roam:quarter rssi 7dBm rate 3 Mb/s
-pureg protmode CTS ht htcompat ampdu ampdulimit 64k ampdudensity 8
-amsdutx amsdurx shortgi htprotmode RTSCTS -puren -smps -rifs wme
-burst -dwds roaming MANUAL bintval 100
AC_BE cwmin 4 cwmax 10 aifs 3 txopLimit 0 -acm ack
cwmin 4 cwmax 10 aifs 3 txopLimit 0 -acm
AC_BK cwmin 4 cwmax 10 aifs 7 txopLimit 0 -acm ack
cwmin 4 cwmax 10 aifs 7 txopLimit 0 -acm
AC_VI cwmin 3 cwmax 4 aifs 2 txopLimit 94 -acm ack
cwmin 3 cwmax 4 aifs 2 txopLimit 94 -acm
AC_VO cwmin 2 cwmax 3 aifs 2 txopLimit 47 -acm ack
cwmin 2 cwmax 3 aifs 2 txopLimit 47 -acm
groups: wlan
g1-254(10.1-S)[7]
(FWIW, my access point has both 2.4GHz & 5GHz radios, and I have
wpa_supplicant.conf set up to prefer each equally.)
I also had picked up an Atheros-based NIC, but I've been unable to
get it to associate for for than a couple seconds at a time (and
it doesn't light the WiFi status light, so I'm pretty much "flying
blind" when I try to use it).
What may I do toward getting any of the WLAN NICs to work in both
stable/10 and head?
Peace,
david
--
David H. Wolfskill da...@catwhisker.org
Those who murder in the name of God or prophet are blasphemous cowards.
See http://www.catwhisker.org/~david/publickey.gpg for my public key.
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