iwn(4) (Intel 4965 wireless) backport (was: Re: Inspiron 1525 Hardware)

[Gavin Atkinson]

On Thu, 2008-09-04 at 18:48 +0100, Gavin Atkinson wrote:
> On Thu, 2008-09-04 at 11:32 -0600, Dan Allen wrote:
> > On 4 Sep 2008, at 10:29 AM, Gavin Atkinson wrote:
> > 
> > > This is supported by the iwn(4) driver in CURRENT, and it should be
> > > quite easy to port the driver to 7-STABLE.  If you're interested in
> > > reinstalling FreeBSD and testing a backported driver, I'm sure this  
> > > can be sorted.
> > 
> > I am interested in doing this.  Please advise on how I can get these  
> > bits.
> 
> I've got hold of a laptop with the 4965 chipset in it, if nobody beats
> me to it I'll have a go at backporting the driver.

OK, I've backported the iwn(4) driver for the Intel 4965 wireless
chipset to 7-STABLE.

You need both of:
http://people.freebsd.org/~gavin/iwn-7/iwn-7.tgz
http://people.freebsd.org/~gavin/iwn-7/iwn-7.diff

Both are relative to /usr and are against 7-STABLE (although may well
apply to 7.0-RELEASE cleanly).

Please note that there are a couple of issues with this driver that
aren't seen with the driver in -HEAD.  Firstly, it only supports B/G
channels, it doesn't work with 802.11a.  Apparently this is due to a
firmware issue which the driver in -HEAD works around, although I don't
know how yet.

Secondly, there may be a slight issue with regulatory domains.  I'm not
certain about this, but I was seeing issues while trying to associate to
an access point on channel 13g, changing the AP to channel 1g fixes
things.

Even with those two caveats, I can say that so far in my testing it's
been working very well.  However, even if the driver works for you, I'm
pretty sure it's too late for a merge before 7.1.

Lastly, as the laptop is on loan to me and I'm going to have to give it
back soon, I don't know if I'll have a chance to do any further work on
this driver.  I'm still interested in stories of success or otherwise.

Thanks,

Gavin