Wifi

Rayman · Jan 24, 2026

Hey, I'm pretty new to freeBSD and I'm stuck without wifi. I did connect it to wifi at home, but now I'm at my friends house and I can't figure it out. I did follow one guide, but it did let me punch in the password it just started connecting.

bda65 · Jan 24, 2026

You can use a GUI app: net-mgmt/wifimgr

Rayman · Jan 24, 2026

How do I use it?

blackbird9 · Jan 24, 2026

Or networkmgr, which will install the gnome 'Network Manager' tool, which will give you a familiar GUI. So 'pkg install networkmgr'.

Or you can generate a copy of wpa_supplicant.conf directly by running 'wpa_passphrase'.
So if your network ssid is "bilbobaggins" and your password is "password", you would do something like

$ wpa_passphrase bilbobaggins password
network={
ssid="bilbobaggins"
#psk="password"
psk=b1ef0550f20f651c7dc5b4637d0b7c91688cd5809883cdf581bf67ff3dcb76d9
}

Of course you will want to delete the comment line that has your unencrypted password.

Then copy that output to /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf (save the old one first), and then run 'service netif restart' to restart the network stack.

Rayman · Jan 24, 2026

Where do I find the encrypted password?

bda65 · Jan 25, 2026

With:

Code:

wpa_passphrase <ssid> [passphrase]

Rayman · Jan 25, 2026

blackbird9 said:
Or networkmgr, which will install the gnome 'Network Manager' tool, which will give you a familiar GUI. So 'pkg install networkmgr'.

Or you can generate a copy of wpa_supplicant.conf directly by running 'wpa_passphrase'.
So if your network ssid is "bilbobaggins" and your password is "password", you would do something like

$ wpa_passphrase bilbobaggins password
network={
ssid="bilbobaggins"
#psk="password"
psk=b1ef0550f20f651c7dc5b4637d0b7c91688cd5809883cdf581bf67ff3dcb76d9
}

Of course you will want to delete the comment line that has your unencrypted password.

Then copy that output to /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf (save the old one first), and then run 'service netif restart' to restart the network stack.

Hey so just tried it and still won't connect me I tried searching something after doing exactly this and it won't load still

scottro · Jan 25, 2026

I'm going to plug my own page. https://srobb.net/fbsdquickwireless.html, gives basic instructions for most forms of wireless. blackbird9's post might have given you most of the info though. Anyway, you have to create the passphrase, as bda65 says. They gave you the command needed. That should create a file you can paste into /etc/wpa_supplicant.

You can do wpa_passphrase myaccesspoint mypassword > somefile. Then copy somefile into /etc/wpa_supplicant. I usually paste it under what is there already, which should be something like

 
ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
eapol_version=2
ap_scan=1
fast_reauth=1

Looking at my present setup, I see it ends with


network={
    priority=0
    key_mgmt=NONE
}

Which I think was also there already.