6.0 and wireless setup - documentation?

[Sam Leffler]

Torfinn Ingolfsen wrote:
> Hello!
> 
> After upgrading my laptop (Thinkpad T41) to FreeBSD 6.0, I was ready
> to try out the new wireless functionality.
> My wireless router uses WPA, and I use dhcp on my network.
> 
> I checked the handbook, the faq and did a search on Google for "freebsd
> wireless wpa".
> 
> 1) Where are the documentation?
> There are man pages for ifconfig, wpa_supplicant and wpa_supplicant.conf
> (BTW, that man page fails to tell you that the file belongs in /etc),
> but there are no "how to set up all necessary files and config for
> wireless with WPA" articles anywhere (that I could find).

The documentation leaves a lot to be desired.

> 
> 2) It seems that we are missing some infrastructure bits (or
> documentation) in /etc/rc.conf. I can use 'ifconfig_ath0="DHCP"' in
> /etc/rc.conf to tell it to start dhclient for that interface, which is
> fine. But how do I tell the system to start wpa_supplicant? 
> As far as I could find out, there are no "wpa_" knobs in
> /etc/defaults/rc.conf and the /etc/rc.d/wpa_supplicant script is missing
> documentation.
> How is this supposed to work, actually?

ifconfig_ath0="WPA DHCP"

> 
> I can get the wireless work manually, like this:
> a) in /boot/loader.conf:
>    if_ath_load="YES"
>    wlan_tkip_load="YES"
> (I got an error message that said the the wlan_tkip modulen should be
> loaded manually for now)

Yes, the crypto modules need to be loaded by hand for now.  There are 
locking issues that make loading on demand painful and I never got 
around to welding the crypto modules into the wlan module.

> 
> b) in /etc/rc.conf:
>    ifconfig_ath0="DHCP"
> 
> c) run /etc/rc.d/wpa_supplicant start ath0
> 
> But how do I automatically run wpa_supplicant on startup?
> 
> I'm running 6.0-stable:
> root at kg-jobbpc3# uname -a
> FreeBSD kg-jobbpc3.kg4.no 6.0-STABLE FreeBSD 6.0-STABLE #0: Sun Nov  6
> 01:33:12 CET 2005    
> root at kg-jobbpc3.kg4.no:/storage/usr/obj/storage/usr/src/sys/GENERIC 
> i386
> 
	Sam