Would Realtek RTL8811CU work on FreeBSD?

bochard

bochard

Hi there, I just have this one question left before installing FreeBSD on my computer. I have no ethernet cable and solely use this usb wifi adapter in order to connect to the internet. The usb wifi adapter I use is from Realtek. This is the wifi adapter information after I ran lsusb on my Linux machine:
Code: 
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0bda:c811 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. 802.11ac NIC
 
I'd just boot a FreeBSD installation image and check the output of sysctl net.wlan.devices, if it would show up there, that means it had been detected and it would probably work.

I've couldn't find a reference about RTL8811CU model in rtwn(4) driver's manual pages.
 
I tried that command net.wlan.devices as well but it just throwed me: not found. Typing the command usbconfig, showed the usb wifi adapter, however.
 
nxjoseph said:
I think that you've made some typo because it should work.
Click to expand...
Yes, I did. I did not included the sysctl before the net.wlan.devices command. I repeated the command with this exactly sysctl net.wlan.devices, yet, it did not output any devices.
 
bochard said:
it did not output any devices.
Click to expand...
So this sounds like it's bad news. Maybe you could consider some other *working* USB WiFi Dongles but finding which one works needs a bit of research, it's not easy to find a list as far as i know. Or If you have some spare router like me, you can use it to give you internet via ethernet cable.
 
You need to create interface using ifconfig

nobody

Post in thread 'WiFi suddenly died'

If you have some usb-wifi card, you could try and see if the error comes with it too. Other checks and things:

Check if wlan is configured

Code: 
ifconfig

If not, find the device as root

Code: 
su root -c lsusb ## for usb wifi

List wlan devices

Code: 
sysctl -h net.wlan.devices

Create wlan interface manually

Code: 
ifconfig wlan<number here>  create wlandev <device here>

Scan created wlan as root

Code: 
su root -c ifconfig wlan<number here> up list scan

Code: 
ifconfig wlan0 create wlandev rtwn\_usb0
 
nobody said:
You need to create interface using ifconfig

nobody

Post in thread 'WiFi suddenly died'

If you have some usb-wifi card, you could try and see if the error comes with it too. Other checks and things:

Check if wlan is configured

Code: 
ifconfig

If not, find the device as root

Code: 
su root -c lsusb ## for usb wifi

List wlan devices

Code: 
sysctl -h net.wlan.devices

Create wlan interface manually

Code: 
ifconfig wlan<number here>  create wlandev <device here>

Scan created wlan as root

Code: 
su root -c ifconfig wlan<number here> up list scan
Click to expand...
I don't think so, it is not detected in sysctl net.wlan.devices, if it did, we could continue to later process.
 
bochard said:
Bus 002 Device 002: ID [B]0bda[/B]:[B]c811[/B] Realtek Semiconductor Corp. 802.11ac NIC
Click to expand...

Realtek RTL8811CU chipset is currently not supported. There is no record of the chipset and device id (c811) in the wifi driver source code.

If you want a FreeBSD supported wifi dongle, buy a cheap, preferable one supported by iwlwifi(4) for 802.11ac support.
 
T-Daemon said:
Realtek RTL8811CU chipset is currently not supported. There is no record of the chipset and device id (c811) in the wifi driver source code.

If you want a FreeBSD supported wifi dongle, buy a cheap, preferable one supported by iwlwifi(4) for 802.11ac support.
Click to expand...
or if you feel really adventurous, then hack the rtwifi driver to include the pci vendor:product code for the unit in question. then rebuild the driver, test, and get back to us. Many times newer components share the register interface with the older versions, but with enhanced feature sets.

or if you feel really really really adventurous, plagarise the linux driver (if one exists) and backfit it into the existing rt freebsd driver for your own personal use. ;)
 
in linux support is provided by rtw88. not sure what the current status of rttw88 is .14.x or 15.x
but
rtw8821cu.c: .driver_info = (kernel_ulong_t)&(rtw8821c_hw_spec) }, /* 8811CU */ (in 14.2-R)
 
T-Daemon said:
There is no record of the chipset and device id (c811) in the wifi driver source code.
Click to expand...
I was mistaken about the device ID c811 not on record.

kent_dorfman766 said:
if you feel really adventurous, then hack the rtwifi driver to include the pci vendor:Product code for the unit in question.
Click to expand...

Regarding RTL8811CU, I'm not sure if it is the same chipset family as RTW8821CU , but there is a record of the device ID connected to the RTW8821CU.
Rich (BB code): 
/usr/src-14.3/sys/contrib/dev/rtw88/rtw8821cu.c
    24:         { USB_DEVICE_AND_INTERFACE_INFO(RTW_USB_VENDOR_ID_REALTEK, 0xc811, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff),
    25:          .driver_info = (kernel_ulong_t)&(rtw8821c_hw_spec) },

    36:         { USB_DEVICE_AND_INTERFACE_INFO(0x7392, 0xc811, 0xff, 0xff, 0xff),
    37:          .driver_info = (kernel_ulong_t)&(rtw8821c_hw_spec) }, /* Edimax */

/usr/src-14.3/sys/dev/usb/usbdevs
  4158: product REALTEK RTW8821CU       0xc811  RTW8821CU

covacat said:
in linux support is provided by rtw88. not sure what the current status of rttw88 is .14.x or 15.x
Click to expand...
Looking on bug reports and mailing lists, /boot/kernel/if_rtw88.ko seems to work well, in general, under all currently supported 13, 14, 15 branches.

According to the rtw88(4) manual, FreeBSD's rtw88 is derived from Realtek's Linux rtw88 driver, using the LinuxKPI framework "to bridge between the Linux and native FreeBSD driver code as well as to the native net80211(4) wireless stack.".

By default the driver auto-loads to the device without any user interaction. Currently his is the case with PCI devices.

The OP's device is a USB dongle. LinuxKPI USB support is not yet completed (necessary for the driver to attach to a USB wifi device) , and it is uncertain whether this will happen any time soon. That means, the OP's USB wifi adapter is unsupported for the time being.


Driver authors (Bjoern A. Zeeb) comment on freebsd-wireless@:
 
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