Convert Windows driver via ndisgen

Paul B Mahol onemda at gmail.com
Thu Apr 29 13:50:00 UTC 2010


On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 12:13 PM, Jerry <freebsd.user at seibercom.net> wrote:
> On Thu, 29 Apr 2010 11:36:35 +0000
> Paul <onemda at gmail.com> articulated:
>
>> On Thu, Apr 29, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Jerry <freebsd.user at seibercom.net>
>> wrote:
>> > Apparently, FreeBSD does not have a driver for a Linksys WUSB600N
>> > network adapter. I was thinking of using the ndisgen utility to
>> > create a driver via the WinXP version. I have three questions.
>> >
>> > 1) The WinXP driver was for an x386 machine. I have a
>> > FreeBSD-8/amd64 PC. From man NDIS(4):
>> >
>> > "Note that this means the ndis driver is only useful on x86
>> > machines."
>> >
>> > Am I therefore to assume that even if I do convert the Windows
>> > Driver to FreeBSD form, it will not work?
>>
>> You can not use 32bit driver on 64bit OS, NDISulator will panic (I
>> have patch for that if anybody is interested in comitting it).
>
> OK, suppose I get the 64bit Windows driver. Could I convert that to one
> FreeBSD could use?
Yes, but note that NDISulator have problems on amd64 with some drivers.
>
> Why can't you submit the patch yourself?
http://gitorious.org/NDISulator

>> >
>> > 2) If I do successfully extract the driver, is there any way that I
>> > can have it compiled directly into the kernel as opposed to having
>> > it loaded via kldload?
>>
>> It is possible but not practical.
>
> Why? It would seem like a natural extension of the entire process.


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