What is the correct Regdomain code?

neilms

neilms

Hi
I am setting up FreeBSD on my laptop for use as a development machine only. I don't plan on installing any gui etc and will just use the console.
I had FreeBSD installed on this machine before but I must have not set it up correctly and want to try harder to get it right.
I will need a internet connection only to download updates and install packages from time to time.
I'm going through the installation steps now and there is a dialogue box that says select your regdomain. There is a list of codes but I'm not sure which one I should use. I live in the UK. Can anyone help me with this? Thanks.
 
This controls how your WLan client is configured: Not all countries use the same frequencies, same power, and so on. The weird things about regdomain include: (a) there is a level of indirection, in the US we say regdomain=FCC and in Europe presumable regdomain=ETSI (those are the standards/regulatory agencies that make the definitions), and (b) the country is not specified as a 2-letter code but as a full name.

For UK = GB, you probably need to set regdomain = ETSI, and country = "United Kingdom" (not UK). Don't worry too much about setting it right initially; you can always fix it later in an ifconfig command for wlan. Or ignore the wireless interface temporarily and string an Ethernet cable.
 
I'd go with US. I'm using a wifi dongle in my laptop and it was manufactured somewhere in China I believe, and used within Europe yet it still uses US.

Edit: I think I'm mixing up my facts here a little bit. Right now I'm specifically referring to country code which got me a bit of trouble when I tried to set up my wifi through ifconfig.

Edit2: # ifconfig wlan0 list regdomain that might be able to give you a good clue as to what you might want to use.

And since I'm editing anyway...

For what's it worth: to get my dongle to work I also had to use a specific 3rd party firmware supplied through the Ports collection (net/bwn-firmware-kmod) before it would work at all. Obviously I can't say that this also applies to your setup, but it's something to keep in mind.

Further more: /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf. See also wpa_supplicant(8). I'm using a hidden SSID on my network and the only way I could get this to work was using this approach. A small snippet:

Code: 
network={
        ssid="<my hidden SSID name>"
        scan_ssid=1
        key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
        auth_alg=OPEN
        psk=<my hidden hexadecimal password>
        priority=10
}
The reason I mention this is because I have no idea how the installation procedure handles all this. But if it doesn't support this approach then I wouldn't worry too much about your wifi not working right away because you might be able to get it working afterwards.
 
I too live in the UK and I set this in /etc/rc.conf
Code: 
create_args_wlan0="country GB"
If you look in /etc/regdomain.xml you can see that GB maps to etsi. So yes, select GB or etsi. That works fine for me.
 
xtaz is exactly right. That is what the installer was asking for. I know this, because I just went through the whole ordeal the hard way. :p

Good luck!

--Chris
 
Phishfry said:
https://wiki.freebsd.org/WiFiRegulatory
Click to expand...

That page no longer exists, we have:
xtaz said:
… select GB or etsi. …
Click to expand...

I thnk: etsi, not GB, because the two are not synonymous for regdomain purposes.

Bearing in mind, the invitation to select a regdomain (not just a country) during installation of FreeBSD.

Code: 
root@momh167-gjp4-8570p:~ # grep wlan /etc/rc.conf
create_args_wlan0="country GB regdomain etsi"
wlans_iwn0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA SYNCDHCP"
root@momh167-gjp4-8570p:~ #

Code: 
root@momh167-gjp4-8570p:~ # grep -A 2 GB /etc/regdomain.xml
<country id="GB">
  <isocc>826</isocc> <name>United Kingdom</name> <rd ref="etsi"/>
</country>
root@momh167-gjp4-8570p:~ #
 
The countrycode and regdomain settings control the channels the card can operate on, as well as maximum transmission power, whether active scanning can be used, where and how ad-hoc mode can be used and also whether DFS and TPC (802.11h) support is required.
 
Chris_H said:
xtaz is exactly right. That is what the installer was asking for. I know this, because I just went through the whole ordeal the hard way. :p

Good luck!

--Chris
Click to expand...
Wow! I'm up against the same issue - I wouldn't have guessed that the small list of regdomains (in pairs, some with a country as the first or second part of the 'pair', some with just two regdomains) was a prompt to drop out of the installer and manually edit a configuration file!

Anyway 'No wireless networks were found. Rescan?'

This aspect of the installer is quite a deal-breaker in some ways, and will definitely put people off if they have been using other Unix-like OSes! It would be awesome to be able to detect WiFi networks (it is such a shame, because the WiFi device I am using is supported in FreeBSD, and while it not may be the regdomain, it just won't find any networks, but it does on mac, Debian (including Ubuntu), Windows, etc!
 
Vull said:
… Also incidentally …:
  1. For me, create_args_wlan0="country US" and it has never been necessary (for me) to specify regdomain.
  2. When I use the USB installer to configure wireless networking while installing 13.0-RELEASE, it allows me, but notably, doesn't require me, to specify regdomain.
  3. regdomain is not case-sensitive. For country code US, /etc/regdomain.xml specifies rd id="fcc" but <rd id="fcc"> specifies <name>FCC</name>. I get the same results whether I use "FCC" or "fcc" for regdomain in my /etc/rc.conf file. I've tried it all three ways, just to be certain of this. Quoting from /etc/regdomain.xml, "Regdomain code gets this information with the IEEE80211_IOC_DRIVERCAPS ioctl." ?…
Click to expand...

I can't recall (and can't easily test), does a prompt for regdomain appear automatically if the person installing chooses a WLAN configuration?

bsdinstall(8) netconfig mentions wlanconfig, which is probably:

https://github.com/freebsd/freebsd-src/blob/main/usr.sbin/bsdinstall/scripts/wlanconfig

Vull said:
riemannesco's country code is probably "FR" for France
Click to expand...

I imagine so. Elsewhere, riemannesco /u/riemannesco wrote: "… la nationalité suisse en habitant en France, …".

Seeing the etsi2 discrepancy for AT, I wondered whether something other than etsi might be appropriate for FR. I found a few documents on the Internet with other codes, but nothing definitive. (I find much of it quite mysterious. I can't complain, when one of the initially interesting documents appeared to be an unauthorised copy of something confidential.)

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IEEE_802.11#Regulatory_domains_and_legal_compliance>


vince66 said:
Could be help:

Regulatory Domains by Country
Click to expand...

It certainly was helpful, thanks, however the site is now down. In the Wayback Machine (nothing more recent):

<https://web.archive.org/web/2021030...mmitdata.com/Documents/Regulatory_Domains.pdf>
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top