How to Wi-Fi

[vince66]

Hello guys,

wi-fi in FreeBSD is not so hard.

To wireless network, a wireless networking card is needed and the kernel needs to be configured with the appropriate wireless networking support.

What is the installed wireless adapter ?

Generally I use ifconfig and dmesg.

In this case ifconfig returns me these info:

and dmesg these info:

QUESTION 1.

Is re0 the real wifi card inserted in the PCI slot ? Or, in other words: does FreeBSD see my wifi card inserted in the PCI slot ?


QUESTION 2.

/boot/loader.conf is empty.

What I need to write inside it ? Or, in other words: how can I determine the correct driver for the wi-fi card ?

___________________________________

Thanks in advance.

 

[Minbari]

First you need to identify your wifi card, re0 it's the ethernet interface not wifi. Run pciconf -lv to see if FreeBSD it's detectiong your wifi card. If it find one then you need to load a module into kernel for it with kldload or for that module to be loaded at every boot you need to add it in /boot/loader.conf

 

[vince66]

pciconf -lv

A brand new Desktop computer has not installed by default a wi-fi card.
If someone want a wi-fi connection, it's necessary install a wi-fi card connecting it to the motherboard's PCI interface.

What happen for a wi-fi card installed in a laptop ? Is the wi-fi chip connected by a PCI interface ?

In other word, if I use FreeBSD on a laptop, can I again use the command:


pciconf -lv


to detect the wi-fi card ?

 

[Minbari]

That command does not detect only the wifi cards, but all the components in your pc, and to answer your question: yes you can use that command on a laptop who has FreeBSD as OS. This command pciconf -lv does exactly what lspci do on GNU/Linux system: prints all your hardware components.