Call for Test and Review: bwn(4) - another Broadcom Wireless driver

[John Baldwin]

On Tuesday 02 March 2010 2:08:55 pm Miki wrote:
> 2010/3/1 Weongyo Jeong <weongyo.jeong at gmail.com>:
> > On Sun, Feb 28, 2010 at 08:45:32PM +0100, Miki wrote:
> >> Hi,
> >>
> >> Thanks for the work !
> >>
> >> I have some problems here when I try to create a wlan interface :
> >> bwn_v4_ucode5: could not load firmware image, error 2
> >> bwn0: the fw file(bwn_v4_ucode5) not found
> >
> > Did you try to UP the interface withload loading bwn_v4_ucode.ko?  If
> > yes currently bwn(4) doesn't automatically load firmware module so you
> > need to do it by hand.
> >
> >  # kldload bwn_v4_ucode
> 
> OK I have loaded bwn_v4_ucode before if_bwn and it works,
> my bad, I should have read the man page more carefully.
> 
> >
> > The patch for this is ready to commit and it'll be happened soon.
> >
> >> I have installed bwn-firmware-kmod from ports but the only files I have in
> >> /boot/modules are bwn_v4_lp_ucode.ko and bwn_v4_ucode.ko. So I tried to
> >> copy bwn_v4_ucode to bwn_v4_ucode5 and it seems to work : wlan0 is
> >> created, I can associate to an open Access Point and obtain a DHCP lease.
> >> But if I try to do some network IO (browsing the web) the interface hang
> >> (I cannot obtain a lease anymore).
> >
> > I have a exact same device like you have but I didn't encounter this
> > issue.
> >
> > Are there any messages from bwn(4) when you the interface becomes hang?
> > One more question, after the interface hang, does the system be hang
> > also?
> 
> I have no messages in the log (appart bwn0: need multicast update callback).
> In fact it's not a hang, it happens only with the AP that permits me
> to have a web
> access. I have another AP (sitting next to me) and I don't have the
> same behavior :
> I can have and renew my dhcp lease multiple times and configure the AP with its
> web interface. With the "buggy" AP I can have a dhcp lease only once and nothing
> more. If I destroy and recreate the wlan interface the same thing happens.
> I have no such a problem with if_bwi and this AP.
> 
> >
> > One thing you can do is that trying the device with PIO mode not DMA
> > mode using the following tunable variable:
> >
> >  hw.bwn.usedma
> >
> > Its default value is 1 to enable DMA operation so if you set it 0, PIO
> > mode would be used and could see the message like below:
> >
> >  bwn0: PIO
> >
> > Could you please test with it?
> >
> 
> Setting hw.bwn.usedma=0 in loader.conf make no differences
> 
> by the way, I need to switch from if_bwn to if_bwi to make some test
> and post the results here, but I have this error message :
> firmware_register: cannot register image bwi_v3_b0g0initvals5, firmware
> table full!
> is this normal ?

Yes, both bwi and bwn use a lot of individual firmware images, so loading
both of them probably fills up the static array of firmware table entries.
I think there is a constant in subr_firwmare.c you can increase to make the
table bigger.

-- 
John Baldwin