wireless networking - halfway solved

[Warren Block]

On Fri, 24 Oct 2014, Anthony Simm wrote:
> On 10/24/2014 09:00 PM, Warren Block wrote:
>> 
>> I searched for firmware updates and found none.  Then I updated the
>> Windows driver and surprise, the card now supported WPA.  I still have
>> that T42, although it does not get used.  It worked the last time I
>> tried FreeBSD on it, and I can drag it out if testing is needed.
>
> Would you really do that?

If necessary, sure.

> But for the time being let me try this Windoze 
> update. Or do you think that it is in fact updated? This machine came with 
> Debian and has reportedly not been used a lot but sure there was Windows on 
> it at some time. No such sticker though.

If it made a WPA connection, you are set.  The output of 'ifconfig' 
shows some information on how it connected.

(It's possible I've forgotten or confused some of the details in the 
years since I did that with my T42.  But as I remember it, it did not 
work with WPA on FreeBSD until that Windows driver update.)

> So for the Handbook, what's missing at least for this card, are the commands 
> to identify it, the legal acknowledgement in
>
> /boot/loader.conf,
>
> the addition of
>
> wlans_ipw0="wlan0"
>
> and
>
> ifconfig_wlan0="WPA SYNCDHCP"
>
> in  /etc/rc.conf
>
> And there was a change in
>
> /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
>
> Did I forget anything? Well, the Windoze thing... crazy.

We can't cover every card in detail, there are just too many.  What I 
wanted to have in the quick start was an easy way for the user to find 
out which card they had, and more importantly, which driver supported 
it.  Unfortunately, the drivers do not have a standard method of being 
queried for which PCI IDs they support, or a script could set this all 
up for the user.

Usually when I have an idea like that, five years go by, then someone 
else thinks of it and is hailed as a genius.