FreeBSD Install Kernel Panic on WiFi Setup RTL8852BE

zzfs6

zzfs6

I was reinstalling FreeBSD 15.0 on a laptop and the installer repeatedly fails (edit: Fatal trap 12: page fault) on WiFi configuration. I had installed FreeBSD 15.0 without issues on this machine 4 months ago without issue which is the weirdest part to me. It installs fine in safe mode, but when following the handbook chapter on configuring WiFi on the new install it does not detect the card.

Thanks for your help!
 
tingo said:
Are you using a driver installed from packages? (on the previous system, the one installed 4 months ago)
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No. It worked fine OOTB. I got around it by installing without wifi, then loading the firmware for rtw89 from a flash drive after installing. It seems to me like an issue with the installer.
 
Does it happen at a particular installer action? Could be a incompatible network interface kernel module but also a lot of other things. I would try to activate it manually from the installer live shell. Create the wlan device and /etc/wpa_suppliicant.conf with ee or vi. You should encounter the actual problem.
 
MG said:
Does it happen at a particular installer action? Could be a incompatible network interface kernel module but also a lot of other things. I would try to activate it manually from the installer live shell. Create the wlan device and /etc/wpa_suppliicant.conf with ee or vi. You should encounter the actual problem.
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Tried this but ran into issues with the read only file system. After installing with copied drivers I had a spurious crash. I then installed the drivers from pkg and the system crashed twice. I used a ethernet adapter and upgraded to 15.0-p5. Haven't had any problems since.
 
zzfs6 said:
Tried this but ran into issues with the read only file system. After installing with copied drivers I had a spurious crash. I then installed the drivers from pkg and the system crashed twice. I used a ethernet adapter and upgraded to 15.0-p5. Haven't had any problems since.
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There's a chance that the wifi kernel module has to be compiled on that kernel. Not sure if copying files from a different 15.0-p? release will cause problems but I have seen a lot of "unsupported file type/binary format" and such errors because of tiny differences in system files of releases.
 
The rtw89(4) driver is still in development. System crash is know to the developer (Bjoern A. Zeeb <bz@freebsd.org>) [1]. Driver development is happening on 16.0-CURRENT. In February 2026 he called for testing on 16.0 and 15.0-STABEL, you might want to try those in a ZFS boot environment, or in a bhyve(8) guest, passing through the wifi pci adapter to the guest:

LinuxKPI (iwlwifi, rtw8x) Please test! Important! 25 Feb 2026

How is testing going? 20 Mar 2026

I myself have a laptop with a RTL8852AE, still crashes sporadic on 16.0.

[1] Bug 290158 - Kernel Panic With RTW89 On 15.0-STABLE Reported: 2025-10-12
 
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