FreeBSD 7.2-STABLE driver support on Thinkpad T500

[William Bulley]

My T500 has Intel 5300 (AGN) wifi hardware on-board, but it is not
detected by any of the FreeBSD wireless device drivers I found in
the GENERIC kernel. I have rebuilt my kernel with all the wireless
device drivers listed in the GENERIC kernel and am running 7.2-STABLE.

Would it do any good to upgrade to 8.0-STABLE, or am I out of luck
with this particular piece of wireless hardware? If so, I am hoping
that Lenovo designed the T500 with a removable wifi module so that I
might (possibly) replace it with one supported by the ath(4) driver.

Thanks in advance.

Regards,

web...

--
William Bulley Email: w...@umich.edu

72 characters width template ----------------------------------------->|

[Warren Block]

On Wed, 3 Feb 2010, William Bulley wrote:

> My T500 has Intel 5300 (AGN) wifi hardware on-board, but it is not
> detected by any of the FreeBSD wireless device drivers I found in
> the GENERIC kernel. I have rebuilt my kernel with all the wireless
> device drivers listed in the GENERIC kernel and am running 7.2-STABLE.
>
> Would it do any good to upgrade to 8.0-STABLE, or am I out of luck
> with this particular piece of wireless hardware? If so, I am hoping
> that Lenovo designed the T500 with a removable wifi module so that I
> might (possibly) replace it with one supported by the ath(4) driver.

The wireless card in that system is an ordinary mini-PCI-e:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-71353

Be aware that IBM used to have a system BIOS that only allowed certain
approved wireless cards. I don't know if that's still the case.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA

[William Bulley]

According to Warren Block <wbl...@wonkity.com> on Wed, 02/03/10 at 12:04:

>
> The wireless card in that system is an ordinary mini-PCI-e:
>
> http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?sitestyle=lenovo&lndocid=MIGR-71353
>
> Be aware that IBM used to have a system BIOS that only allowed certain
> approved wireless cards. I don't know if that's still the case.
>
> -Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA

Thanks, Warren! :-)

That is way cool! And it is as I suspected. Thanks for confirming.

[Maciej Milewski]

Dnia �roda, 3 lutego 2010 o 16:48:16 William Bulley napisa�(a):

> Would it do any good to upgrade to 8.0-STABLE, or am I out of luck
> with this particular piece of wireless hardware? If so, I am hoping
> that Lenovo designed the T500 with a removable wifi module so that I
> might (possibly) replace it with one supported by the ath(4) driver.

Info about this driver is on forums[1]. I think that it has been commited to
HEAD and it can be on his way to STABLE branch but this I'm not sure.

1. http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?t=8041

Regards,
Maciej Milewski

[Gary Dunn]

On Wed, 2010-02-03 at 10:48 -0500, William Bulley wrote:
> My T500 has Intel 5300 (AGN) wifi hardware on-board, but it is not
> detected by any of the FreeBSD wireless device drivers I found in
> the GENERIC kernel. I have rebuilt my kernel with all the wireless
> device drivers listed in the GENERIC kernel and am running 7.2-STABLE.
>
> Would it do any good to upgrade to 8.0-STABLE, or am I out of luck
> with this particular piece of wireless hardware? If so, I am hoping
> that Lenovo designed the T500 with a removable wifi module so that I
> might (possibly) replace it with one supported by the ath(4) driver.
>

I just put 8.0-STABLE on my Fujitsu T1010 with Intel 5100 AGN and the
iwn driver works perfectly. This what I put in /etc/rc.conf. (My home
network is "Oz," I do not use encryption, and I restrict access by MAC
address.)

# iwn0 is built-in wifi
wlans_iwn0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="DHCP ssid=Oz"

And here is output of ifconfig:

$ ifconfig
msk0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu
1500
options=11a<TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING,TSO4>
ether 00:17:42:f4:ec:37
media: Ethernet autoselect (none)
status: no carrier
iwn0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu
2290
ether 00:16:ea:68:d5:dc
media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect mode 11g
status: associated
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 16384
options=3<RXCSUM,TXCSUM>
inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
wlan0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu
1500
ether 00:16:ea:68:d5:dc
inet 10.0.1.10 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 10.0.1.255
media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet OFDM/54Mbps mode 11g
status: associated
ssid Oz channel 3 (2422 Mhz 11g) bssid 00:1e:52:7a:36:af
country US authmode OPEN privacy OFF txpower 15 bmiss 10 scanvalid 60
bgscan bgscanintvl 300 bgscanidle 250 roam:rssi 7 roam:rate 5
protmode CTS wme

--
Gary Dunn, Honolulu
o...@aloha.com
http://openslate.net/
http://e9erust.blogspot.com/
Sent from Slate001

[William Bulley]

According to Gary Dunn <know...@aloha.com> on Fri, 02/05/10 at 04:56:

>
> I just put 8.0-STABLE on my Fujitsu T1010 with Intel 5100 AGN and the
> iwn driver works perfectly. This what I put in /etc/rc.conf. (My home
> network is "Oz," I do not use encryption, and I restrict access by MAC
> address.)
>
> # iwn0 is built-in wifi
> wlans_iwn0="wlan0"
> ifconfig_wlan0="DHCP ssid=Oz"

Thanks, and this is very encouraging, but, BUT, will this work with
the Intel 5300 (AGN) that my T500 has installed? The man page for
iwn(4) lists the 5100 but not the 5300. I am not familiar enough
with this Intel hardware to know if they are close enough to each
other (work-alikes) for the iwn(4) driver.

This might be worth my trying (to rebuild my kernel) this weekend
if I get the chance. Thanks again! :-)

[benjamin close]

On 06/02/10 00:08, William Bulley wrote:
> According to Gary Dunn<know...@aloha.com> on Fri, 02/05/10 at 04:56:
>
>> I just put 8.0-STABLE on my Fujitsu T1010 with Intel 5100 AGN and the
>> iwn driver works perfectly. This what I put in /etc/rc.conf. (My home
>> network is "Oz," I do not use encryption, and I restrict access by MAC
>> address.)
>>
>> # iwn0 is built-in wifi
>> wlans_iwn0="wlan0"
>> ifconfig_wlan0="DHCP ssid=Oz"
>>
> Thanks, and this is very encouraging, but, BUT, will this work with
> the Intel 5300 (AGN) that my T500 has installed? The man page for
> iwn(4) lists the 5100 but not the 5300. I am not familiar enough
> with this Intel hardware to know if they are close enough to each
> other (work-alikes) for the iwn(4) driver.
>
> This might be worth my trying (to rebuild my kernel) this weekend
> if I get the chance. Thanks again! :-)
>
>

Looking at the driver, it appears yes - guess the man page is out of date:
(From src/sys/dev/iwn/if_iwn.c

static const struct iwn_ident iwn_ident_table [] = {
{ 0x8086, 0x4229, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 4965BGN" },
{ 0x8086, 0x422D, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 4965BGN" },
{ 0x8086, 0x4230, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 4965BGN" },
{ 0x8086, 0x4233, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 4965BGN" },
{ 0x8086, 0x4232, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 5100" },
{ 0x8086, 0x4237, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 5100" },
{ 0x8086, 0x423C, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 5150" },
{ 0x8086, 0x423D, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 5150" },
{ 0x8086, 0x4235, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 5300" },
{ 0x8086, 0x4236, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 5300" },
{ 0x8086, 0x4236, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 5350" },
{ 0x8086, 0x423A, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 5350" },
{ 0x8086, 0x423B, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 5350" },
{ 0x8086, 0x0083, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 1000" },
{ 0x8086, 0x0084, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 1000" },
{ 0x8086, 0x008D, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 6000" },
{ 0x8086, 0x008E, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 6000" },
{ 0x8086, 0x4238, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 6000" },
{ 0x8086, 0x4239, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 6000" },
{ 0x8086, 0x422B, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 6000" },
{ 0x8086, 0x422C, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 6000" },
{ 0x8086, 0x0086, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 6050" },
{ 0x8086, 0x0087, "Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 6050" },
{ 0, 0, NULL }
};

Cheers,
Benjamin