Release notes and handbook changes for identifying wireless adapters

[Ben Woods]

Hi,

FreeBSD wireless users who are upgrading to FreeBSD 11.0 will likely get a
surprise when they try and identify which wireless adapters are available
in their computer by using ifconfig. Neither the FreeBSD 11 release notes
or the FreeBSD handbook currently explain this change.

For example, if you have an atheros wireless driver, you would
previously be able to see it using ifconfig, even before configuring the
wlan0 clone device.

% ifconfig | grep -B3 -i wireless


That was changed with commit r287197:
https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=287197

The new way to show which wireless adapter is available is:
% sysctl net.wlan.devices

Whilst the configuration in /etc/rc.conf required to activate a wireless
adapter has not changed, people may run into the hurdle of not even finding
which wireless adapter to configure in the first place. This can be seen
here:
https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=203271

Regards,
Ben


--

--
From: Benjamin Woods
wood...@gmail.com
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[Shawn Webb]

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Hey Ben,

I completely agree. It also seems like a POLA violation. I dislike that I can't get information like MAC address prior to creating the clone. Instead of simply 'ifconfig ath0 ether', now it's 'ifconfig wlan0 create wlandev ath0; ifconfig wlan0 ether'. Some networks use MAC address whitelisting. It's also not possible to easily tell which adapter is which, in case of multiple of the same adapters.

The discussion on this is too late for code changes to 11.0-RELEASE, but this should be documented loud and clear.

Thanks,

Shawn

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Sent from my Android device with K-9 Mail. Please excuse my brevity.
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[Warren Block]

On Mon, 1 Aug 2016, Shawn Webb wrote:

> The discussion on this is too late for code changes to 11.0-RELEASE, but this should be documented loud and clear.

The difficulty here is that now we have to document different methods
for different versions, which makes it harder for new users *and* the
people trying to document it. Too bad net.wlan.devices doesn't exist on
10.X. Maybe it could.

[Lars Engels]

On Tue, Aug 02, 2016 at 07:02:05AM +0800, Ben Woods wrote:
> Hi,
>
> FreeBSD wireless users who are upgrading to FreeBSD 11.0 will likely get a
> surprise when they try and identify which wireless adapters are available
> in their computer by using ifconfig. Neither the FreeBSD 11 release notes
> or the FreeBSD handbook currently explain this change.
>
> For example, if you have an atheros wireless driver, you would
> previously be able to see it using ifconfig, even before configuring the
> wlan0 clone device.
>
> % ifconfig | grep -B3 -i wireless
>
>
> That was changed with commit r287197:
> https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=287197
>
> The new way to show which wireless adapter is available is:
> % sysctl net.wlan.devices
>
> Whilst the configuration in /etc/rc.conf required to activate a wireless
> adapter has not changed, people may run into the hurdle of not even finding
> which wireless adapter to configure in the first place. This can be seen
> here:
> https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=203271
>

rc.conf behaviour has changed in regard of creating lagg interaces.

10.x needs this (copied from the handbook [1]):

ifconfig_bge0="up"
ifconfig_iwn0="ether 00:21:70:da:ae:37"
wlans_iwn0="wlan0"
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA"
cloned_interfaces="lagg0"
ifconfig_lagg0="laggproto failover laggport bge0 laggport wlan0 DHCP"


11.x needs this:

ifconfig_bge0="up"
wlans_iwn0="wlan0"
create_args_wlan0="ether 00:21:70:da:ae:37" # new
ifconfig_wlan0="WPA"
cloned_interfaces="lagg0"
ifconfig_lagg0="laggproto failover laggport bge0 laggport wlan0 DHCP"



[1] https://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/network-aggregation.html

[Lars Engels]

Small correction:


create_args_wlan0="wlanaddr 00:21:70:da:ae:37"