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OpenBSD General Other questions regarding OpenBSD which do not fit in any of the categories below. |
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What's a good Wireless PCI NIC for OpenBSD-5.8?
Hi,
I have a poorly functioning Atheros AR9227 wireless PCI on FreeBSD 10.2 that doesn't work at all with OpenBSD. I'm tired of FreeBSD's "quirks" and administrative load so it's time to pony up and get a decent wireless network card that will work well with OpenBSD. The firmware page and the FAQ page, 6.13 - What are my wireless networking options?, aren't really helping. Any suggestions on which chipset/driver is nicest and products on the market that are known to work well? Thanks! |
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At the moment OpenBSD does not support /n transmission speeds, just b/g. I have reliable connections with the ral(4) RT2561 and ath(4) based cards. The ral card requires firmware that the vendor agreed could be distributed by the project while the ath cards do not use firmware.
I've seen the older ral link cards for less than $10USD. This is a good database with 3 search options. I usually look by chipset. Last edited by shep; 6th February 2016 at 10:16 PM. |
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High!
Is there documentation, or an easy way to determine: which drivers are binary blobs from the manufacturer? It seems like some might be open-source with community development. (Does anyone know how/where the firmware files are generated?)
Suggestions for *really* good (and economical) products that make use of manufacturer binary blobs are welcome (well, by me). |
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Firmware, on the other hand, is always supplied by the manufacturer. This is code that runs on the peripheral itself, and is not a driver, and does not run on the CPU. There are three types of firmware:
The list for the second type of firmware can be found in /etc/firmware. The list for the third type can be found on the firmware distribution server, http://firmware.openbsd.org. You will find some of these files on an OpenBSD machine in /etc/firmware, when installed by fw_update(). Last edited by jggimi; 7th February 2016 at 12:30 AM. Reason: added quote, since Oko's post was sandwiched |
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And, as to blobs -- Binary, Large Object Blocks -- OpenBSD will never allow them in the OS, by policy. The Project even has a song about them.
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I also think iwm(4) based cards only are available for PCIe slots. The OP was looking for a PCI card. |
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Firmware of type 1, 2 or 3 makes no difference whatsoever. All devices have one of these types of firmware.
When it comes to WiFi drivers and Wifi chipsets that work well (or do not) this is a constantly changing landscape. $ apropos wireless lists the currently available drivers, and each man page will describe any bugs or caveats you would need to be aware of. You can see a history of recommendations from users (and sometimes developers) on the misc@ mailing list archives. About a decade ago I saw a presentation with a list of color coded recommendations, but I cannot locate it now and it would be well out of date. What was considered well supported or poorly integrated a decade ago is likely no longer useful information. WiFi isn't the only type of device that might load a firmware file. In particular, Radeon video cards must lload firmware in order to control DRM signalling. You'll see Radeon firmware for download on that firmware server mentioned above. |
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If documentation is not publicly available, then OpenBSD is less likely to have a useful device driver. The Project members will not accept a closed source driver, nor will any members sign an NDA for interface information in order to produce a driver. "Reverse Engineering" a hardware component is difficult, requires special skills, and usually produces an inferior program product. Quote:
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Do they share the insights, experience, and metrics they gather during driver development? |
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Over the years, there have been both papers and presentations published. As I mentioned above. You can look through the list, if you like -- there are links to both in the sidebar of the main Project website.
Some examples of hardware discussion, from recent presentations at the presentation link. It goes back :to 1999, so there's a lot there. Just looking at recent hardware presentations: http://quigon.bsws.de/papers/2015/as.../mgp00037.html pages 12 and up from http://www.openbsd.org/papers/eurobs...eon_dsr500.pdf http://www.openbsd.org/papers/eurobsdcon2014_iscsi/ http://www.openbsd.org/papers/eurobsdcon2013-mpath.pdf |
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Any there any recommendations for Intel cards? Quote:
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It is more the chipset. SMC produced a PCI 54 card and versions 1 and 2 used the prism54 chipset. Prism54 chipsets are supported with native drivers. Later a Version 3 was released with an unsupported chipset. Also the rights to chipset were bought by Conexant who pull the firmware off the web. Only archived firmware for prism54 chipsets is available. For the record, I'm using an Edimax EW-7128g which is also listed in ral(4). I googled and there are some available used in the $10-20 range and a "new" one in box for $24.. Last edited by shep; 7th February 2016 at 04:53 AM. |
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By "native drivers" do you mean that all of the software needed to use the NIC is in the OpenBSD distribution (i.e., on the installation CD)? So then versions 1 and 2 of the SMC produced a PCI 54 card with the prism54 chipset probably has a firmware license such that the OpenBSD project can distribute it, or the card might have embedded firmware (in flash memory, maybe).
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It would be an option for your AR9227 in FreeBSD. |
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