WLAN Card compatible, but not showing up in pfsense?
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Hmmm.. pci1: <network>at device 11.0 (no driver attached) Heres my prob. How do I load drivers for my device?</network>
My understanding is that the kernel is built with the drivers for all supported devices built in. Hence there is nothing to do to load drivers for your device, it is not supported.
The dmesg output shows that the operating system detects the presence of the card - a prerequisite for getting it operational.
If you want me to investigate a bit further you could post the output of the command "pciconf -r pci1:11:0 0:63" (my previous post on dmesg describes how to use the GUI to execute a command on the pfsense box) and I'll see if it tells me what chipset is on the card. Its just possible that the chipset is supported but none of the drivers recognise the way the chipset appears on your card. If thats the case, a small tweak to an existing driver might be enough to get you going, though this is fairly unlikely.
If you want to have a working wireless interface the quickest route will be to get a card with known supported chipset. I can make a few suggestions. I expect you will be able to get a new card for well under US $40 (before shipping and taxes). There are probably a few more options if you are prepared to consider a USB NIC.
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Also you could try to install the new 1.2.1 which is built upon FreeBSD 7.
–> FreeBSD 7 supports more hardware than 6.2 -
Thank you so much for the reply. As soon as I get home I will try this command and post the output…... Is there any KNOWN name brand card I can pick up at CompUSA, Wal-Mart, or even radio shack that will be compatible with my machine?
Thanks.
I get home about 9:30EST, and I will post a reply asap!
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Also you could try to install the new 1.2.1 which is built upon FreeBSD 7.
–> FreeBSD 7 supports more hardware than 6.2I am currently running 1.2.1. I even did the new updated snapshot I believe was released 2 days ago.
Thanks!!
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I've been using a couple of TP-LINK TL-WN651G cards for the last nine months and they work well. They use the well regarded Atheros chipset. A quick scan of http://www.compusa.com shows them listed for $24.99.
I can give you more options in about 12 hours.
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Thank you sir! I will pick up this card in the next few hours. I wanted to go with wireless N, but hell you can't beat that price. So this card is working with BSD 7 pfsense 1.2.1 snapshot?
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Well SCRATCH that… :( I just called CompUSA and they told me they do not have it in stock. I am wiring my whole house tomorrow, all bedrooms with ethernet, cat5, and coaxal, and I wanted to get my whole network up!!! arf.... anyone know of any supported cards that I can buy from CompUSA, Best Buy, Wal-Mart?
Please advise.
Thanks guys!
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I'm pretty certain there are no compatible wireless n adapters for FreeBSD yet. I believe wireless N support is in FreeBSD 7 but last I heard there were no compatible drivers yet (Remember wireless N is pre N as N is not finalized yet). If you wanted to do N you would need an external wireless N device connected to pfSense through ethernet.
Most the time the supported cards are so specific you have to order them.
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The cards here: http://pcengines.ch/order1.php?c=4 are all supported and work very well with pfSense.
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The cards in the list at pcengines all look like mini-pci cards which would need an adapter to go into a regular PCI slot.
mechanicalmetal: I presume you are after a card capable of acting as an access point (AP). The FreeBSD ath and ral drivers support that. The man page for ral (see http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ral&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+7.0-RELEASE&format=html
lists a number of supported cards. I have no experience with the ral driver but have no reason to believe it wouldn't work well.The ath man page (http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ath&apropos=0&sektion=0&manpath=FreeBSD+7.0-RELEASE&format=html) doesn't list supported cards but does list supported chipsets. If you explore vendor links on http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility you will be able to find a number of PCI cards with a supported chipset. (madwifi is the Linux driver for Atheros PCI chipsets - their web site is a good source of information on chipsets and cards.)
If you can wait a few days you could order the TP-LINK card (or its "little brother", the TP-LINK TL-WN550G) I mentioned earlier. If you are in a hurry you could call your preferred local computer shops, ask them what "wireless G" (or 802.11G) PCI cards they have in stock, get a list and see what cards match up against the list of cards supported by ral or ath.
Warning: To minimise hassle avoid cards by Belkin, Dlink, Linksys or Netgear. All these suppliers (and quite possibly others as well) use the same model name for cards with a number of different chipsets. For most humans there is no way of telling what chipset is in one of those cards without plugging it into a computer, powering it on and seeing how the card identifies itself. This doesn't matter for Windows computers - they provide a CD with drivers for all the possible chipsets. However they rarely provide drivers for Open Source operating systems so you take your chances with getting such cards working on Open Source systems.
Also, I don't know of any "wireless n" (802.11N) cards supported by FreeBSD.
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Guys sorry I havent been back to reply to this thread. I did get wireless working! Prior to all of your wonderful posts, special thanks to mr. mcrane for personally walking me through card selections.
It is confirmed that Linksys WMP54G Wireless G version 4.1 works and detects flawlessly with bsd7 pfsense v1.2.1.
This card was purchased from CompUSA, and im pretty sure that your local walmart or bestbuy should carry it as well.Again, many thanks to all of your replies, and if anyone needs to PM me reguards to the WLAN card, please do so or feel free to msg me on AIM:mechanicalmetal or Yahoo:therealdank
Take care!!!!
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I've been using a couple of TP-LINK TL-WN651G cards for the last nine months and they work well. They use the well regarded Atheros chipset. A quick scan of http://www.compusa.com shows them listed for $24.99.
I can give you more options in about 12 hours.
Just got one of these, version 1.5 and detects as AR5005GS in windows.
Pfsense cannot detected this, I tried with 1.2,1.2.1-RC2,2.0-ALPHA
No luck, any suggestions? I tried with in different pci-slots, putting static irq etc. My motherboard is P2B
The only thing I get in dmesg related to this are:
ath_hal: 0.9.20.3 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413)
pci0: <bridge>at device 4.3 (no driver attached)EDIT: seems that my motherboard (P2B, v1.02, bios 1012) doesnt support pci 2.2v wich the card requires. So even tought the machine sees the card it cant use it. Problem solved, hopefully this ends up in google and some other poor soul doesnt waste an evening like I just did :)</bridge>
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Pfsense cannot detected this, I tried with 1.2,1.2.1-RC2,2.0-ALPHA
Interesting! I have a version 1.5 card in an older (but not as old as a P2B) mini-ITX motherboard and it works fine on 1.2.1-RC2 and a number of older builds - in fact every build I tried from the 1.2 version based on FreeBSD 6.3. (I didn't try anything earlier.)
On what evidence did you decide pfSense didn't detect the card? Here's how it shows up in my startup (I'm running 1.2.1-RC2):
ath_hal: 0.9.20.3 (AR5210, AR5211, AR5212, RF5111, RF5112, RF2413, RF5413) . . . ath0: <atheros 5212="">mem 0xee000000-0xee00ffff irq 12 at device 8.0 on pci0 ath0: [ITHREAD] ath0: using obsoleted if_watchdog interface ath0: Ethernet address: 00:19:e0:68:31:4b ath0: mac 7.9 phy 4.5 radio 5.6</atheros>I'm composing this message on a P2B based system. I'll try to check out my spare TL-WN651G on the P2B later today. I can't think of any reason whay the card wouldn't be detected by pfSense, at least to the point of being reported as a ath device during startup.
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I tried the TL-WN651G in the spare slot of my P2B. The BIOS doesn't even report it. pfSense doesn't see it it any fashion - it was just as if nothing was plugged into that slot.
I also have a Gigabyte GN-WPKG PCI card which has a Ralink 802.11G chipset. i plugged the Gigabyte card into the same slot I used for the TP-LINK card. The Gigabyte card was reported by the BIOS and the ral driver in pfSense 1.2.1-RC1. I didn't attempt to configure the Gigabyte card or use it. But there was something curious about this card as well. The system has a USB PCI card using a NEC USB 2.0 chipset. With this USB card in the system the startup would hang soon after reporting the NEC USB devices. When I removed the card with the NEC USB chipset the system started up and entered the usual configuration dialogue when booting from pfSense CD.
I suspect you may need to choose carefully when it comes to getting a wireless PCI card for the P2B. I suspect the Gigabyte GN-WPKG card has been superseded. Based on this experience I would be cautious about assuming a card with a recent chipset will work on the P2B motherboard.
