24.11 ---> 25.07 page fault while in kernel mode

what3ver

Yes, I may be able to install another NIC and connect the MiFi via cable. But are you saying that the Intel WiFi cards are too old and therefore unsupported in the newer BSD versions?

stephenw10

Nope I'm saying they require loading firmware into the card and the upstream firmware API is broken which is what you're seeing. Other wifi hardware/drivers like Atheros (ath(4)) do not and hence work fine in 25.07:

[25.07-RELEASE][admin@6100.stevew.lan]/root: pciconf -lv ath0
ath0@pci0:17:0:0:	class=0x028000 rev=0x01 hdr=0x00 vendor=0x168c device=0x0030 subvendor=0x168c subdevice=0x3112
    vendor     = 'Qualcomm Atheros'
    device     = 'AR93xx Wireless Network Adapter'
    class      = network

But this failing because it can't find the firmware and hits the bug. We may be able to work around it. Let me see if I can test something....

stephenw10

Hmm, nope. Even providing the firmware separately still hits the bug. As far as I can see this will remain until it's fixed upstream.

what3ver

Thank you for trying. Does this mean that the Intel WiFi cards will not work until someone updates the driver in FreeBSD 15?

stephenw10

Currently in pfSense it does, yes. Because the firmware is not present, it tries and fails to load it and that hits the bug. It should not panic if it can't find the firmware.

If the firmware was still in-kernel it might load normally. I can't test that. I couldn't get it to load the firmware as a kernel module.

what3ver

I see a new version of Pfsense (25.07.1) has just been released. The documentation refers to issues with certain hardware:

*Changes in this version of pfSense Plus software.
Operating System¶

Fixed: Go-based software crashes on hardware with 5-level paging (LA57) #16369

Fixed: EFI loader fails to boot on some devices #16381*

I can't tell if this includes the Intel Wifi cards. @stephenw10 Do you know if it is safe to try 25.07.1?

stephenw10

No that's unrelated to the wifi NIC firmware. You will still need to remove or disable the NIC to boot 25.07.1.

what3ver

@stephenw10 Thanks. I tried adding another NIC to the machine as you had suggested. But unfortunately adding it invalidates the device ID, which in itself disables the update check. Is there a way around that?

stephenw10

If it's the first time it's changed I can probably migrate it to the new NDI. Send it to me in chat and I'll check it.

what3ver

@stephenw10 Any news regarding this firmware load issue? Will version 25.11 contain a fix?

stephenw10

It's still an open bug upstream: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=283285