Broadcom BCM43231 - how to add the firmware to pfSense?

rasa

Hi All!

this topic is similar to of /topic/24306/broadcom-bcm4311-how-to-add-the-firmware-to-pfsense

The question is similar as well - how to add the firmware of Broadcom BCM43231 to pfSense?

Many thanks.

stephenw10

What error are you seeing?

The firmware for almost all supported drivers are included and will be loaded automatically by the driver.

What device do you actually have? You show BCM4311 in the title but also BCM43231. So that could be the bwn(4) driver.

Steve

rasa

Hi Stephen,

thank you for the answer.
Excuse me, I would like to edit the title to BCM43231, but as I newbie on the forum - can't change the title.

I didn't see any error, I have WNA3100 USB dongle and, unfortunately it shows no error or any messages. I have plugged it in, bwn and bwi are already kldloaded from kernel.
dmesg says "<Broadcom Remote Download Wireless Adapter>"

No new interfaces in ifconfig or smth like that.

Probably I should ask, what are my next steps?

Thank you.

stephenw10

Run usbconfig dump_device_desc to get the vendor and product IDs.
Check those against the driver to see if anything should support it.

I can't find much that looks like FreeBSD support for BCM43231 though. It may just not be supported.

rasa

I can't find much that looks like FreeBSD support for BCM43231 though. It may just not be supported.

It seems Broadcom is the company with very closed and proprietary system, and moreover support/development against BSD & Linux OS's are absolutely indifferent.

Anyway, thank you for the help, I will try another dongle, preferably Atheros.

usbconfig dump_device_desc:
ugen4.2: <Broadcom Remote Download Wireless Adapter> at usbus4, cfg=0 md=HOST spd=HIGH (480Mbps) pwr=ON (200mA)

bLength = 0x0012
bDescriptorType = 0x0001
bcdUSB = 0x0200
bDeviceClass = 0x00ff <Vendor specific>
bDeviceSubClass = 0x0000
bDeviceProtocol = 0x0000
bMaxPacketSize0 = 0x0040
idVendor = 0x0846
idProduct = 0x9020
bcdDevice = 0x0001
iManufacturer = 0x0001 <Broadcom>
iProduct = 0x0002 <Remote Download Wireless Adapter>
iSerialNumber = 0x0003 <113>
bNumConfigurations = 0x0001

stephenw10

Yup, FreeBSD doesn't seem to know about that device:
https://github.com/pfsense/FreeBSD-src/blob/devel-main/sys/dev/usb/usbdevs#L3459