Re: How to install wifi firmware with no wired connection

> On Oct 23, 2026, at 8:38 PM, Adrian Chadd <adrian@freebsd.org> wrote:
> 
> On Fri, 23 Oct 2026 at 20:30, Jordan Hubbard <jordan.hubbard@gmail.com <mailto:jordan.hubbard@gmail.com>> wrote:
>> Is there some particular reason this is a documented work-around rather than simply including the wifi firmware in the installer image?
>> 
>> It’s so straight-forward to include the firmware on the installation ISO, even with limits on the ISO size (the >2GB ISO images are probably, in fact, a little bloated!) that I must be missing something?
> 
> I was under the impression that the wifi firmware packages /are/ included in the full ISO images.
> They're not included in the smaller ones, and I do hit cases where firmware just isn't installed
> and I have to do it post installation.

OK, I think I see at least “part of the problem” - when people are talking about FreeBSD installation media, the install matrix doesn’t make it immediately obvious just what kind of installation they are talking about.

Using just one architecture in order to simplify the discussion (using CSV since pasting HTML tables is considered rude) - name, uncompressed, compressed:

bootonly.iso, 546.7 MB, 116.4 MB
disc1.iso, 1,352.3 MB, 895.0 MB
dvd1.iso, 4,605.0 MB, 3,732.5 MB
memstick.img, 1,552.6 MB, 895.2 MB
mini-memstick.img, 678.8 MB, 116.4 MB

The conventions here are a mix of historical + new distributions.  The memstick and mini-memstick are the newest.   Questionable is “boot only.iso” since it could theoretically be folded into mini-memstick if their missions were aligned a bit better, making one redundant.  Disc1.iso is a legacy from the Walnut Creek CDROM days in which we literally distributed multiple CDROM images, though I see it’s also (ironically) bloated beyond what one could actually FIT on a single CDROM, so I’m not sure what its purpose is.  dvd1.iso is another legacy from when we distributed on DVD.

The overall picture painted here is “a little weird” if you don’t know the backstory, and even though Change Is Hard, maybe simplifying the distribution story is the right baby step to take towards making sure that all of the relevant firmware files can be counted upon for all but the “tiny memstick” case?

When I started knocking out Daemonarchy ISOs, I picked just one target:  GitHub’s artifact size of <= 2Gb.  Given that Microsoft tried so hard to kill OSS in general and FreeBSD more specifically by kicking it out of Hotmail, back in the day (yeah, that went well for everyone), I find the idea of using Microsoft’s servers and CDNs to both distribute OSS bits and do all of the CICD runs to be rather delicious!   Not to suggest that FreeBSD should dismantle its lovingly crafted set of international mirrors or anything, but a “one click URL” that just hits the Github CDN also simplifies things A LOT and it’s what the cool kids are currently doing.  Heck, even Apple does it now for all of its OSS distributions - they retired their CDN and just dropped everything into GitHub’s lap.  I’m sure the tasty tasty irony of doing that was similarly delicious to the Apple OSS folks, but I digress.

2GB is as reasonable a size as any other, and what you can’t fit into 2GB you probably couldn’t fit into 4GB or 8GB or any other power of two because now you’re just Going Nuts and trying to put everything possible into one image.  Why?   Download it up-front or incrementally once you have the machine fully network connected, it’s all just bits over the wire, and the latter is clearly more elegant.

- Jordan