Broadcom BCM4321 Wireless connection configuration problems

Victor vdemart at gmail.com
Fri Sep 1 15:39:33 UTC 2017


I'm trying to make the wifi connection of my old macbook (2007) work but, at the moment, to no avail. I'm stranded and perplexed!

Context:
FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE #2: Fri Sep  1 16:02:16 CEST 2017     root at bsd:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/MYKERNEL  amd64

The kernel MYKERNEL was compiled adding only:
options	BWN_GPL_PHY
device	firmware

I installed from the ports net/bwn-firmware-kmod

In /boot/loader.conf I have 
if_bwn="YES"

In /etc/rc.conf as usual
wlans_bwn0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA DHCP"
..........................


The wifi chip is a broadcom BCM4321 as you can see from the extract of /var/log/messages
...............................
siba_bwn0: <Broadcom BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless> mem 0xd0500000-0xd0503fff at device 0.0 on pci1
siba_bwn0: warn: multiple PCI(E) cores
siba_bwn0: unsupported coreid (USB 1.1 Host)
bwn0 on siba_bwn0
bwn0: WLAN (chipid 0x4321 rev 12) PHY (analog 5 type 4 rev 2) RADIO (manuf 0x17f ver 0x2055 rev 4)
bwn0: DMA (64 bits)
bwn0: Note: compiled with BWN_GPL_PHY; includes GPLv2 code
bwn0: Using 1 MSI messages
Sep  1 16:36:00 bsd wpa_supplicant[1290]: Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant
wlan0: Ethernet address: 00:1e:c2:ac:de:a3
bwn0: ucode fw: ucode11
bwn_v4_ucode11: could not load firmware image, error 2
bwn0: the fw file(bwn_v4_ucode11) not found
bwn0: ucode fw: ucode11
bwn-open_v4_ucode11: could not load firmware image, error 2
bwn0: the fw file(bwn-open_v4_ucode11) not found
.........................................................

You see that there is a problem with the firmware image. Ifconfig shows

% ifconfig
msk0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
	options=c011a<TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,TSO4,VLAN_HWTSO,LINKSTATE>
	ether 00:1f:5b:e8:96:50
	hwaddr 00:1f:5b:e8:96:50
	nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
	media: Ethernet autoselect (none)
	status: no carrier
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
	options=600003<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,RXCSUM_IPV6,TXCSUM_IPV6>
	inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128 
	inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x2 
	inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000 
	nd6 options=21<PERFORMNUD,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
	groups: lo 
wlan0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
	ether 00:1e:c2:ac:de:a3
	hwaddr 00:1e:c2:ac:de:a3
	nd6 options=29<PERFORMNUD,IFDISABLED,AUTO_LINKLOCAL>
	media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect (autoselect)
	status: no carrier
	ssid "" channel 165 (5825 MHz 11a)
	regdomain FCC country US authmode WPA1+WPA2/802.11i privacy MIXED
	deftxkey UNDEF txpower 23 bmiss 7 mcastrate 6 mgmtrate 6 scanvalid 60
	wme roaming MANUAL bintval 0
	groups: wlan 



BESIDES .... the man page of bwn declares that


BWN(4)                 FreeBSD Kernel Interfaces Manual                 BWN(4)

NAME
     bwn - Broadcom BCM43xx IEEE 802.11b/g wireless network driver
........
     This driver requires firmware to be loaded before it will work.  The
     c port needs to be installed before ifconfig(8)
     will work.  In most cases the bwn_v4_ucode kernel module from the port
     should be used.  However, if an LP (low power) PHY is being used, the
     bwn_v4_lp_ucode module should be used.
...........

BUT both modules are missing

% sudo kldload bwn_v4_ucode
kldload: can't load bwn_v4_ucode: No such file or directory
% sudo kldload bwn_v4_lp_ucode
kldload: can't load bwn_v4_lp_ucode: No such file or directory

Please help.
Ciao Vittorio




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