Hi everyone,
a few things will come up soon and I figured I'll send an update about
iwlwifi and 11n/11ac testing. As it goes with FreeBSD we often only
hear about when things don't work but we'd also sometimes love to hear
if things do start working. That's especially more important with the
14.3-RELEASE cycle starting this month.
In short: run fwget(8) and you may get 11n and 11ac support on for
iwlwifi AX200 and newer out of the box. Please report back either way!
In Long:
It's been 6-ish weeks since I sent out the initial request(s) for
testing hw_crypto [1] and iwlwifi 11n/11ac [2].
As also announced [3] and now imminent pending review [4] firmware will
be removed from main and stable/14 src.git the next days and everyone
should run fwget(8) (or switch to ports based firmware if you build
yourself) to get the firmware for their specfic chipset installed.
If you ran fwget(8) in the past, pkg upgrade will give you the latest
versions for you kernel at all times. You should only need to re-run
fwget(8) if you change your hardware. 20240513.<FreeBSD_version>_2
should be the current set (which also works for iwx(4)).
If you do switch to package based firmware with fwget(8) you will now
(on main and stable/14) get HW_CRYPTO (crypto acceleration offloading),
HT (11n), and VHT (11ac) enabled automatically if your chipset is
expected to be supported. Those would be the 22000, AX210 and BE200
chipset generations (roughly AX200 and newer).
If things do not work, please see [5] or below on how to disable
features so you can use 11a/b/g with basic rates still. The tunables
(sysctls to check for the current status) to enable (=1)/disable (=0)
the features are:
compat.linuxkpi.80211.hw_crypto=0
compat.linuxkpi.iwlwifi_11n_disable=0
compat.linuxkpi.iwlwifi_disable_11ac=0
You will need to set these in /boot/loader.conf.local (create the file
if needed).
Again, you should only need to manually do anything about those in case
something does not work and in that case you should definitively let us
know.
Some things don't work as expected yet for some people:
- AX101 seems to have issues (pending me getting hardware to debug)
- The "BT Coex" crash [6] is reported more often (I am working on that
currently)
- A panic on reboot due to inconsistent net80211 locking [7]
- There's a firmware crash reported presumably when switching bands
- WEP, TKIP are not working yet and came as a surprise but I am half
way through the code (also preparing for other new cipher suit
support) so should come soon too (famouse last words).
- Ht/VHT support for older iwlwifi chipsets and rtw88 and rtw89 are also
still TBD/to be finished.
- For a full list of LinuxKPI based driver problems please see [8]. You
can always search bugzilla before reporting a new problem but don't
stop reporting!
As I said, we know what doesn't work. Here's some more that I'd love to
hear more about if it happens to you:
- Vague rumors said some people failed to get onto 11a[c] but 11[bgn]
worked fine. Please sned an email to the list if that happens to
you. Please include the output of ifconfig -v wlan0 (or equivalent)
and ifconfig -v wlan0 list scan as a first step.
On the other hand if things do work please also have a look at:
- When you are associated:
sysctl compat.linuxkpi.80211.wlan0
it will report rx_beacon_signal_avg, rxrate, and txrate as seen by the
firmware (and the values may change depending on how you are using wifi).
This information will likely not match ifconfig output. That's a fun
project for someone one day.
I am running out of things and likely forgot some, but most importantly:
thanks to everyone who has already given it a try, is patiently waiting
for me to fix some of the above, and the FreeBSD Foundation. See their
Laptop Project [9] for more interesting things, and check updates here
and on the desktop mailing list.
Looking forward to hear from you, I'll go back to code,
Bjoern
PS: anyone wants to test a new version of the driver(s) please stay tuned!
[1]
https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-wireless/2025-February/002895.html
[2]
https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-wireless/2025-February/002964.html
[3] https://lists.freebsd.org/archives/freebsd-wireless/2025-March/003062.html
[4] https://reviews.freebsd.org/D49713
[5] https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=285765#c1
[6] https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=280546
[7] https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=285729
[8]
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/showdependencytree.cgi?id=273622&hide_resolved=1
[9] https://github.com/FreeBSDFoundation/proj-laptop
--
Bjoern A. Zeeb r15:7
