Problems with WiFi networks - HP 255 G7, FreeBSD 14.2

[Mauricio]

Hey! : )

I have decided to install FreeBSD 14.2 in my laptop (HP 255 G7).

This model use a WiFi card detected as rtw880 in the system.

Ive used FreeBSD 14.1 in this laptop before, and i had to add the line "compat.linuxkpi.skb.mem_limit=1" 

in my /boot/loader.conf file for the WiFi card to work.

I did the same for this 14.2 installation. And my WiFi card is recognized when looking at the ifconfig output.

I proceeded to add the lines needed at

/etc/rc.conf and /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf for the system to connect to my desired network.

(As shown in the robonuggie youtube channel which has been appropiate for me in the 14.1 system version.

Anyways, when i use "ping 1.1.1.1" to check the status of my connection, last lines indicate "No route to host"

so i guess system didnt make the connection.

I also tried to configure the network in bsdconfig, but i cannot select any network that appear as scanned in the interface.

What can i do to resolve this issue?

P.D: Im still new to these mailing lists, so if im not following whatever convention that is appropiate here, feel free to let me know.

And thanks for the attention!

[Frank Leonhardt]

Hi Maurico,

I don't know about the WiFi aspect specifically but if ping this is your only test for an IPv4 connection some more debugging information would be useful.

What's the output of ifconfig      ?

What's the output of netstat -r   ?

Regards, Frank.

[Dave Cottlehuber]

On Tue, 1 Apr 2025, at 17:33, Mauricio wrote:
> Hey! : )
>
> I have decided to install FreeBSD 14.2 in my laptop (HP 255 G7).
> This model use a WiFi card detected as rtw880 in the system.

Welcome Mauricio!

> I did the same for this 14.2 installation. And my WiFi card is
> recognized when looking at the ifconfig output.

A general suggestion is to provide the relevant info:

- the section of dmesg

- rc.conf if its not obvious what you'd have

- any output like ifconfig wlan0

> Anyways, when i use "ping 1.1.1.1" to check the status of my
> connection, last lines indicate "No route to host"
> so i guess system didnt make the connection.

other that `ifconfig wlan0` what's in `netstat -r4n` ?

This will show if you got an IP at all, and also if a default
route has been created.

There should be a file in /var/db/dhclient.leases.*

One possibility is that the DHCP client either didn't run, or
did not get an answer in time.

Try deleting /var/db/dhclient.leases.* and running

`service dhclient restart wlan0`

or in the foreground:

# service dhclient stop wlan0
$ dhclient -d wlan0

This should produce output like this:

DHCPREQUEST on igc0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67
DHCPACK from 172.16.1.1
bound to 172.16.1.4 -- renewal in 150000 seconds.

and it should also run the hook script which sets the
default route.

A+
Dave

[Mauricio]

Thanks for the attention, both of you.

Here i share the output of the commands you requested:

dmesg: https://pastebin.com/pYWAkSed

ifconfig: https://pastebin.com/JcETgrGU

netstat -r: https://pastebin.com/298KabLG

netstat -r4n: https://pastebin.com/5kMhuFB6

And my rc.conf file: https://pastebin.com/55Gt0yGG

> There should be a file in /var/db/dhclient.leases.*

I could not find it, everything mentioned after /var/db was not in the location.

So i could not delete it as you suggested.

Running $ dhclient -d wlan0 outputs: https://pastebin.com/VSRPTUD2

[Dave Cottlehuber]

> On Wed, Apr 2, 2025 at 4:30 AM Dave Cottlehuber <d...@skunkwerks.at> wrote:
>> On Tue, 1 Apr 2025, at 17:33, Mauricio wrote:
>> > Hey! : )
>> >
>> > I have decided to install FreeBSD 14.2 in my laptop (HP 255 G7).
>> > This model use a WiFi card detected as rtw880 in the system.
>>
>> Welcome Mauricio!
>>
>> > I did the same for this 14.2 installation. And my WiFi card is
>> > recognized when looking at the ifconfig output.

TLDR try installing 14-STABLE to see if this is resolved.

I wrote most of the notes below before finding PR283142, so just
use it to refer to in future.

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=272145 seems relevant
with https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=283903
as does https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=283142 which
looks like a fix may already be in 14-STABLE, my suggestion would be
to see if 14-STABLE works or not.

> dmesg: https://pastebin.com/pYWAkSed

rtw880: <rtw_8821ce> port 0x2000-0x20ff mem 0xc0600000-0xc060ffff at device 0.0 on pci1
rtw880: successfully loaded firmware image 'rtw88/rtw8821c_fw.bin'
rtw880: Firmware version 24.8.0, H2C version 12

> ifconfig: https://pastebin.com/JcETgrGU

wlan0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> metric 0 mtu 1500
options=0
ether 00:e9:3a:db:06:fb
groups: wlan
ssid "" channel 11 (2462 MHz 11g). <---------
regdomain FCC country US authmode WPA1+WPA2/802.11i privacy ON
deftxkey UNDEF txpower 30 bmiss 7 scanvalid 60 protmode CTS wme
roaming MANUAL
parent interface: rtw880
media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect (autoselect)
status: no carrier <-------------------------

So you're not getting an IP address from DHCP server because no
connection is being established to the access point (no carrier).

While I can't diagnose this, you should grab output of wifi scan,
and run wpa_supplicant in debug mode, and update one of the
tickets above if its still an issue on 14-STABLE.

# ifconfig -v wlan0 list scan
# pkill -ilf wpa_supplicant
# wpa_supplicant -tddi wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

You may need to sanitise this file, it may contain your wifi password

A+
Dave

[Mauricio]

The suggestion of trying FreeBSD 14 STABLE ended with success.
I can use WiFi correctly now.

One good thing i noticed is that i dont need to type anymore that "linuxkpi..." in /boot/loader.conf anymore for the WiFi card to work correctly.

I'm really thankful for all your help.
I want to keep digging on this system and now its more easy.

By the way, thanks for made me know about the risks of one of my text files, however, i tought about it beforehand, and found that i had reasons to not care about that for now.
Again, thanks for the help.

[Mauricio]

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Mauricio <humo...@gmail.com>
Date: Sun, Apr 6, 2025 at 11:07 AM
Subject: Re: Problems with WiFi networks - HP 255 G7, FreeBSD 14.2
To: Dave Cottlehuber <d...@skunkwerks.at>

Felt the need of clarifying that I still need to add the "

compat.linuxkpi.skb.mem_limit=1" line in /boot/loader.conf for the WiFi card to work, actually.

If I did not add the mentioned line, the WiFi card would work, but just for some minutes and then the connection will fail.