Help me!!! pfsense doesn't detect dlink wireless DWA-525 card
-
@Cry:
Please read the stickies at the top of the wireless forum.
Those look outdated to me ;)
Is there an up-to-date list with cards that work?
And any word on how the support for N cards (in AP mode) is going?
edit: Status about that can be found here: http://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2010-10-2010-12.html#FreeBSD-802.11n -
Don't forget it applies to FreeBSD 6.3 (ISTR), which pfSense 1.2 is based on. That means that it won't have changed much in some time.
The cards supported by pfSense 2.0 is the same as that supported by FreeBSD 8.
-
Ah thanks :)
But unfortunately that list does not mention which WLAN NIC's can be used in AP-mode. -
There is a spreadsheet at https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AojFUXcbH0ROdHgwYkFHbkRUdV9hVWljVWl5SXkxbFE&hl=en#gid=0 which gives the capabilities of wireless devices supported in FreeBSD 8.1 and pSense 2.0. (This spreadsheet doesn't display correctly under Opera, which I'm using at the moment, but it used to display correctly under Firefox.)
I've successfully used the TP-Link TL-WN321G and Tenda W311U (supported in pfSense 2.0 BETA by rum and run drivers respectively) as access points in my home network. The WN321G is a 802.11G device and the W311U is a 802.11N device but I don't have any other 802.11N devices to test 802.11N capability
-
(Still) works fine in Firefox ;)
I just checked that list out. When I looked at the supported devices from the drivers that actually support AP-Mode, I did not see one PCI* WiFi adapter with N capabilities. Or I overlooked it…
*No USB, would like it inside the case. :) -
You can get usb with external antenna. Or just use an external usb port? Even use an extension cable to move it away from your steel case.
Steve
-
I just want a PCI card to put in the case ;) .
-
If I recall correctly, there have been reports in 2.0 BETA or Wireless forums of at least one Atheros 802.11n PCI chipset working with the ath driver. However FreeBSD 802.11n support isn't up to supporting the 802.11n capable devices in 802.11n mode(s).
There has been work on a driver for a 802.11n Ralink PCI chipset but the driver is not in the FreeBSD source tree and there are some difficulties in putting it into the FreeBSD source tree in its present form.
-
http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,27258.msg141959.html ? That's PCI Express. Let's see if I can find a PCI version of that card and if it supports hostap.
edit: DWA-552, now looking for hostap mode.
edit2: Seems to work (with Ubuntu): http://www.spinics.net/lists/linux-wireless/msg55835.html and http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1053962 .
edit3: Can't find stores that sell that card in Europe… Although I found one on Ebay UK :) (Now waiting till the bidding is over.)I know there is no N(-mode) support yet, but they are working on it I believe. At least I've seen several people making/porting drivers for N-cards, something with "git"(?).
-
The ath driver supports ap mode. Searching http://linux-wless.passys.nl/query_chipset.php?chipset=Atheros for 802.11n capable PCI devices I found the TP-Link TL-WN951N The listed PCI IDs in the referenced web page appear to be recognised by the "current" ath driver (not necessarily the one in pfSense 2.0 BETA snapshots). If you browse the TP Link web site (http://www.tp-link.com) you may find a "where to buy" link (at least I did for the UK but that may not be the case for the best approximation to your home country). The TL-WN951N is available retail where I live for the local equivalent of around US$40.
I don't have one to try but you may think its worth trying.
-
Ehm, dumb question ;), is the ath driver a different one than the ath9k that is listed on that page?
Thanks for that website though, makes searching easier :)Plenty of stores that sell it here in the Netherlands :) : http://tweakers.net/pricewatch/253876/tp-tl-wn951n.html starting from $32,77.
Hmm, too late to cancel the bidding, so I will try the one from Ebay when it gets here. I'll post if I can get the D-LINK DWA-552 to work.
(Otherwise I put it in my moms pc, saves a cable going through the house :P and then I'll try the one you mentioned.) -
The website http://linux-wless.passys.nl is reall oriented to Linux users hence the referenced driver names are the names of Linux drivers. I find it useful to see the type of chipset in a card, then I can go and look at the FreeBSD Hardware support list and (sometimes) the FreeBSD driver sources to check whether a card is likely to be supported in pfSense.
Hence the ath9k (linux driver name) should be ignored for this purpose. -
From what I've seen so far TP-LINK seems to have fairly consistent codes and numbering for their products, mostly consistent on the chipset, number of antennas supported, and what type of interface or device it is. For example, I've seen various 3-antenna 802.11n Atheros 5416-based devices with 9xx numbers, 2-antenna versions of the same with 8xx numbering, and 802.11g Atheros 5212-based devices with 6xx numbers; wireless cards, access points, and routers (though I'm not sure this applies to their USB products).
-
That has been my observation too. Only exception I've seen: The TL-WN650G and TL-WN651G seem to have pretty much disappeared from retail outlets here and been replaced by the TL-WN350GD which is reported to have the Atheros AR2417 (update of AR5007G). I don't have a TL-WN350GD so can't say if it works with the ath driver.
-
The website http://linux-wless.passys.nl is reall oriented to Linux users hence the referenced driver names are the names of Linux drivers. I find it useful to see the type of chipset in a card, then I can go and look at the FreeBSD Hardware support list and (sometimes) the FreeBSD driver sources to check whether a card is likely to be supported in pfSense.
Hence the ath9k (linux driver name) should be ignored for this purpose.Ah okay. :)
The 552 is on it's way, could take a while to get here (to the other side of the earth :P )…
-
It's already here ;D, but for testing it seems I have to take my router offline.
To avoid that I wrote a snapshot to a(nother) CF card, put it in a Sweex USB->CF/SD/etc cardreader and have my moms pc boot from it (so my router can stay online while testing).
Well, it boots, but for some reason the cardreader turns off while booting causing pfSense to look for it and ends up with something like this: http://img408.imageshack.us/img408/7834/img0580h.jpg (Found pic with Google).edit: Gonna try a full install on an old 2GB harddrive, hope that works right away .
-
You have probably hit the 'unable to mount root filesystem' problem seen when a drive is connected so it has a different device name and /etc/fstab is not updated for the change in device name. In your case, your original drive was probably something like /dev/ad0 and /etc/fstab would have said the root file system was at /dev/ad0s1a. When you move that drive (or a copy) to a usb interface its device name changes to something like /dev/da0 so /etc/fstab should be changed in sympathy.
If you search the forums for 'unable to mount root file system' you'll probably see a few examples of how to deal with this.
-
Uhm, I only wrote the snapshot image to the CF card and had my moms computer boot from it right after that, so where does the change take place ???. It was in the USB cardreader the whole time and nothing happened to it (as far as I know).
Offtopic: to get to the console with a null-modem cable, I used a 486, or was it a 386, laptop with Windows 3.11 8). Was the only computer around and not in use that had a RS232 port….Anyway, I dug up an old 2GB hard drive, checked it for bad sectors with "just" 3MBps :P , then I did a full install and managed to get things going. The 552 is recognized out of the box, only had to add it to the interfaces list and then I could set it up as an AP.
Well, it showed up on both my phone and laptop, but they could not connect to it at first, they tried to get an IP-address through DHCP (which I enabled) but they just stopped trying and then my phone said the network was out of range.
After that I gave both my phone and laptop static IP's, then they could connect, but kept getting kicked off after a few sec for some reason. Couldn't even open up the webinterface of pfSense in that time.
They automaticly reconnected though.In the system log I found this:
Feb 6 14:14:25 dhclient[55700]: DHCPDISCOVER on ath0_wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 10 Feb 6 14:14:23 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e IEEE 802.11: deassociated Feb 6 14:14:20 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 00:18:de:00:ee:d8 IEEE 802.11: deassociated Feb 6 14:14:20 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e WPA: pairwise key handshake completed (RSN) Feb 6 14:14:20 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e RADIUS: starting accounting session 4D4EA97C-00000059 Feb 6 14:14:20 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e IEEE 802.11: associated Feb 6 14:14:17 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e IEEE 802.11: deassociated Feb 6 14:14:17 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e WPA: pairwise key handshake completed (RSN) Feb 6 14:14:17 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e RADIUS: starting accounting session 4D4EA97C-00000058 Feb 6 14:14:17 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 00:18:de:00:ee:d8 WPA: pairwise key handshake completed (RSN) Feb 6 14:14:17 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 00:18:de:00:ee:d8 RADIUS: starting accounting session 4D4EA97C-00000057 Feb 6 14:14:17 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 00:18:de:00:ee:d8 IEEE 802.11: associated Feb 6 14:14:17 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e IEEE 802.11: associated Feb 6 14:14:15 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e IEEE 802.11: deassociated Feb 6 14:14:14 dhclient[55700]: DHCPDISCOVER on ath0_wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 11 Feb 6 14:14:12 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 00:18:de:00:ee:d8 IEEE 802.11: deassociated Feb 6 14:14:12 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e WPA: pairwise key handshake completed (RSN) Feb 6 14:14:12 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e RADIUS: starting accounting session 4D4EA97C-00000056 Feb 6 14:14:12 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e IEEE 802.11: associated Feb 6 14:14:10 dhclient[55700]: DHCPDISCOVER on ath0_wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 4 Feb 6 14:14:09 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e IEEE 802.11: deassociated Feb 6 14:14:09 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e WPA: pairwise key handshake completed (RSN) Feb 6 14:14:09 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e RADIUS: starting accounting session 4D4EA97C-00000055 Feb 6 14:14:09 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e IEEE 802.11: associated Feb 6 14:14:09 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 00:18:de:00:ee:d8 WPA: pairwise key handshake completed (RSN) Feb 6 14:14:09 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 00:18:de:00:ee:d8 RADIUS: starting accounting session 4D4EA97C-00000054 Feb 6 14:14:09 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 00:18:de:00:ee:d8 IEEE 802.11: associated Feb 6 14:14:07 hostapd: ath0_wlan0: STA 78:47:1d:27:a0:2e IEEE 802.11: deassociated Feb 6 14:14:07 dhclient[55700]: DHCPDISCOVER on ath0_wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 3 Feb 6 14:14:05 dhclient[55700]: DHCPDISCOVER on ath0_wlan0 to 255.255.255.255 port 67 interval 2
And on the screen of the computer that was running pfSense:
ath0: stuck beacon; resetting (bmiss count 4) ath0: bb hang detected (0x80)
I just Googled this, read reports of this having to do with the channel selection being on auto?
Gonna try to set it manually later on. -
Uhm, I only wrote the snapshot image to the CF card and had my moms computer boot from it right after that, so where does the change take place ???. It was in the USB cardreader the whole time and nothing happened to it (as far as I know).
In Freebsd SATA and PATA drives are called /dev/ad0, /dev/ad1 etc while USB drives are called /dev/da0, /dev/da1 etc. if you installed to /dev/ad0 your root file system will be something like /dev/ad0s1a and /etc/fstab will say so. (FreeBSD startup reads /etc/fstab on the boot drive to see what file systems need to be mounted.)
Thus your CF card will have a /etc/fstab that says the root file system is /dev/ad0s1a but this won't be on your cf drive (which will be called something like /dev/da0).
-
Hmm, 'kay :)
Btw, I am not sure how but got rid of the errors and the connection is not dropped and I can access pfSense's webinterface through the 552 ;D
I couldn't do any speedtests, well, I could have tried but I don't think a speedtest between my phone and laptop would show the maximum :P
(Just thought of the iperf package, but the computer I was trying this on did not have access to the internet.)At least I know this card seems to be working with pfSense ;D , eventhough the lack of N support, but hoping this might change.
Now waiting for some antennas with cables (so that they do not have to be put away behind the pc case under the desk).
The ANT24-0230 unfortunatly is not available outside of North America (and no shops willing to ship it here ???) so now waiting for some alternative I found on Ebay. :)