[SOLVED] [Update] Intel Centrino advanced-n 6205 wireless card not showing up

thekeymaker

background:
Hi all, I'm new to pfsense and have been using FreeBSD for only about 6 months. Have been a long time user of Gentoo linux so I am learning fast.
Problem:
Decided to install pfsense(2.0.2) on an old computer and made a livecd to first test out the hardware. Everything seems to work fine except for a new wireless card I put into it. It didn't show up on the displayed network card and I then went into a shell and ifconfig did not display it either. Its a Intel Centrino advanced-n 6205. From doing some research it looks like that card might work under FreeBSD with the (iwn) driver.

http://gitorious.org/freebsd/freebsd/blobs/HEAD/share/man/man4/iwn.4

I found the above but don't know if that man page is part of the current stable version of FreeBSD or not and thus not in pfsense yet. I also did search the forum here and the only somewhat relevant post I could find was this.

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,48135.0.html

Any ideas how I might be able to get this working(loading driver)? I really appreciate any help.
Also if this card isn't supported now, would it be beneficial to keep this wireless card around that it might be supported in the near future?
I did see that N is not supported yet and would be willing to run it at g/b.

Thanks again for reading this!

wallabybob

You can view the FreeBSD man pages at http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi after selecting he appropriate version of interest.
The man page for iwn in FreeBSD 8.1 (used in the pfSense 2.0.x series) says the iwn driver supports 4965/5000 cards. The man page for iwn in FreeBSD 8.3 (used in pfSense 2.1 snapshot builds) says it supports Intel Wireless WiFi Link 4965, 1000, 5000 and 6000 series of PCI-Express network adapters.

I suggest you try a snap build of pfSense 2.1 which can be downloaded by following the appropriate links from http://snapshots.pfsense.org. You should be able to download a firmware update file, the do a firmware upgrade through the web GUI on your current pfSense.

thekeymaker

YAY!

You are the man/woman wallabybob!

Thank you for both of the links they were extremely helpful. Just to update anyone reading this it did work for me. pfsense 2.1 Beta recognizes the card. Just a short explanation. I tried update with and img from the gui but it didn't seem to work. I hadn't installed pfsense yet, just ran the livecd, so I burn myself a new livecd of 2.1 Beta. It booted up and recognized the card.

Thank again wallabybob. I appreciate you taking the time to reply.

Hope the weather is great out in Australia. My wife and I will be heading out that way later this year.

cheers,

~thekeymaker

biggsy

Hope the weather is great out in Australia.

I don't want to put you off visiting or anything - and I'm not sure about the weather where wallabybob lives - but we just hit 44.9oC in Sydney!

thekeymaker

[UPDATE]

Card works but it look like to only supports infrastructure mode. Both Ad-hock and access point don't enable the card (in the interface tab) and it prints that the mode is not supported on a monitor connected to the old computer. Darn. Guess I will just use my old router for wireless and connect it on another NIC on the computer.

There isn't any way to change this with ifconfig is there**?** I assume it is a static flag and something this card just doesn't support.

Once again thanks for all the posts.

~ we should be coming during the Winter season so hopefully it might be slightly colder…

wallabybob

@thekeymaker:

Card works but it look like to only supports infrastructure mode.

Check the man page. It doesn't say AP mode is supported. I don't know what is involved in supporting AP mode on the card.

http://forum.pfsense.org/index.php/topic,57771.msg309272.html contains a link to a mini PCI-Express card available from Amazon that is reported to work.

@thekeymaker:

~ we should be coming during the Winter season so hopefully it might be slightly colder…

I live on the Gold Coast, about 900km North of Sydney. Temperatures have been much more reasonable here recently. Winter is beautiful, too warm for snow. The tourism people say "beautiful one day, perfect the next"