Solved Availability of wifi devices in memstick/live install image

[nutilius]

I want to explore FreeBSD on real hardware but I'm not sure does wifi devices on my laptops are supported. So I downloaded memstick image and boot from it to the live mode on three different laptops (2 ASUS Zen and one Lenovo IdeaPAD). In each case I see in dmesg information about device (iwm0 on ASUS and ath0 on Lenovo), but ifconfig -l shows only lo0 interface. But when I insert USB network card, after messages about plugged device ifconfig -l shows additional network interface en0.

Why I don't see wlan network interfaces as ready to configure? Does it mean that my installation will not support thats devices?

 

[tingo]

Have you read the section about wireless network devices in the handbook?

 

[scottro]

I have a page giving some quickstart advice.

FreeBSD Wireless Quickstart

Since FreeBSD-11 or so, the way to see if your wireless is seen is to use sysctl.

sysctl net.wlan.devices

The handbook link.

Chapter 34. Advanced Networking

Advanced networking in FreeBSD: basics of gateways and routes, CARP, how to configure multiple VLANs on FreeBSD, etc

docs.freebsd.org

 

[nutilius]

Yes - I read handbook but missed very important entry - creating wlan interface as cloned from real device using ifconfig wlan0 create wlandev <device>. As person long time using Linux and different Unix systems I didn't suspect such mapping operation. scottro - your site was very helpful for me - thank you!

 

[scottro]

Trite though it sounds, that's the reason I do it, to help folks avoid the things I missed. I'm glad the page was helpful.