Wireless interface iwm0 not showing in GUI?

mmiller7

With the pandemic making me work from home and some recent outages I have been trying to find a way to get failover internet...the obvious thing (to me) is my travel cellular MiFi/Jetpack gets a little signal in one particular window and if I could connect the WiFi card in my pfSense router to the MiFi I could have a 2nd WAN and do failover.

After the 2.4.5_p1 update adding the kernel modules the Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 8260 card now shows as iwm0 in the terminal (a step forward!) but iwm0 is not listed in the GUI to pick for setting up a wireless device.

From dmesg:

iwm0: <Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 8260> mem 0xfe900000-0xfe901fff irq 40 at device 0.0 on pci3
iwm0: SecBoot CPU1 Status: 0x3090001, CPU2 Status: 0x0
iwm0: Failed to start INIT ucode: 35

pciconf -lv tells me:

iwm0@pci0:3:0:0:	class=0x028000 card=0x10108086 chip=0x24f38086 rev=0x3a hdr=0x00
    vendor     = 'Intel Corporation'
    device     = 'Wireless 8260'
    class      = network

But trying to add iwm0 I don't see it were I expect:

Anyone have suggestions how to troubleshoot this?

Cypher87

I have exactly the same issue.

iwm0: <Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 8260> mem 0xdf000000-0xdf001fff irq 17 at device 0.0 on pci4
iwm0: SecBoot CPU1 Status: 0x3090001, CPU2 Status: 0x0
iwm0: Failed to start INIT ucode: 35

Tried to load the firmware through rc.conf.local and loader.conf.local. But that did nothing.

https://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=iwm&apropos=0&sektion=4&manpath=FreeBSD+11.3-RELEASE&arch=default&format=html

kiokoman

the problem is
iwm0: Failed to start INIT ucode: 35

for some reason is not loading the firmware

but they have built it into the kernel

imho it would have been better to compile them out as modules instead

nothing else on dmesg ?

Cypher87

No nothing else. I've checked the /var/log files as well, but nothing there either.

viktor_g

Please create a bugreport:
https://docs.netgate.com/pfsense/en/latest/development/bug-reporting.html

kiokoman

i have added info here @viktor_g https://redmine.pfsense.org/issues/7725

stephenw10

Hmm, odd that it doesn't appear in the list in the gui even though it does appear as an interface and is present here:
https://github.com/pfsense/pfsense/blob/master/src/etc/inc/globals.inc#L82

That initialisation error looks like a show stopper but...

Have you tried configuring or querying the interface directly?

Does it show in the output of sysctl net.wlan.devices?

Steve

Cypher87

No it does not show....

net.wlan.devices:

stephenw10

@Cypher87 said in Wireless interface iwm0 not showing in GUI?:

iwm0: Failed to start INIT ucode: 35

Hmm, the iwm8000 firmware is the last one to load I wonder if that is failing? Testing....

stephenw10

Nope looks OK in 2.4.5p1:

Jun 20 22:22:48 	kernel 		firmware: 'iwm3160fw' version 0: 918268 bytes loaded at 0xffffffff82026e90
Jun 20 22:22:48 	kernel 		firmware: 'iwm7260fw' version 0: 1049340 bytes loaded at 0xffffffff82107240
Jun 20 22:22:48 	kernel 		firmware: 'iwm7265fw' version 0: 1180412 bytes loaded at 0xffffffff822075f0
Jun 20 22:22:48 	kernel 		firmware: 'iwm7265Dfw' version 0: 1383604 bytes loaded at 0xffffffff823279a0
Jun 20 22:22:48 	kernel 		firmware: 'iwm8000Cfw' version 0: 2390316 bytes loaded at 0xffffffff82479708
Jun 20 22:22:48 	kernel 		firmware: 'iwm8265fw' version 0: 1811984 bytes loaded at 0xffffffff826c10e8

Cypher87

Anything else I can do to help diagnose this issue?

mmiller7

@stephenw10
what command were you running to get that list?

Still in the same boat here...about the only thing I haven't done is a total reinstall from scratch. I've rebooted and powered fully off and reseated stuff...

mmiller7

I did just notice something on my prompt...is there a way to 100% verify that it's booted the new/current kernel and not a previous one when it reboots after the install?

While the homepage says 2.4.5-p1 doing uname -a just says 2.4.5, I'm unsure if this is expected or not.

[2.4.5-RELEASE][root@pfSense.apt]/root: uname -a
FreeBSD pfSense.apt 11.3-STABLE FreeBSD 11.3-STABLE #243 abf8cba50ce(RELENG_2_4_5): Tue Jun  2 17:53:37 EDT 2020     root@buildbot1-nyi.netgate.com:/build/ce-crossbuild-245/obj/amd64/YNx4Qq3j/build/ce-crossbuild-245/sources/FreeBSD-src/sys/pfSense  amd64

stephenw10

Yeah, uname -a reports the June 2nd build. That is correct.

I booted in verbose mode to see the firmware load list. Add boot_verbose="YES" to /boot/loader.conf.local.

Steve

mmiller7

Ok, booting with that I see those but still no joy.

[2.4.5-RELEASE][root@pfSense.apt]/root: grep iwm /var/log/*
/var/log/dmesg.boot:firmware: 'iwm7265Dfw' version 0: 1383604 bytes loaded at 0xffffffff823279a0
/var/log/dmesg.boot:firmware: 'iwm8000Cfw' version 0: 2390316 bytes loaded at 0xffffffff82479708
/var/log/dmesg.boot:firmware: 'iwm8265fw' version 0: 1811984 bytes loaded at 0xffffffff826c10e8
/var/log/dmesg.boot:firmware: 'iwm3160fw' version 0: 918268 bytes loaded at 0xffffffff82026e90
/var/log/dmesg.boot:firmware: 'iwm7260fw' version 0: 1049340 bytes loaded at 0xffffffff82107240
/var/log/dmesg.boot:firmware: 'iwm7265fw' version 0: 1180412 bytes loaded at 0xffffffff822075f0
/var/log/dmesg.boot:iwm0: <Intel(R) Dual Band Wireless AC 8260> mem 0xfe900000-0xfe901fff irq 40 at device 0.0 on pci3
/var/log/dmesg.boot:iwm0: attempting to allocate 1 MSI vectors (1 supported)
/var/log/dmesg.boot:iwm0: using IRQ 271 for MSI
/var/log/dmesg.boot:random: harvesting attach, 8 bytes (4 bits) from iwm0
/var/log/dmesg.boot:iwm0: SecBoot CPU1 Status: 0x3090001, CPU2 Status: 0x0
/var/log/dmesg.boot:iwm0: Failed to start INIT ucode: 35

Any ideas what else to try? I was reminded to check back when my ISP went out for a few hours again in another storm...

stephenw10

Hmm, it sure looks like this: https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=229138

Are you able to test FreeBSD 11.3 directly? It looks like an upstream bug.

If not maybe try pfSense 2.5 which is built on FreeBSD 12.1 currently.

Steve

mmiller7

@stephenw10 Hmmm, I'll have to see if there is a FreeBSD LiveCD to try (never looked before) if so I could do a test.

I've actually seen that bug report in my searches but was unsure if it still applied with my understanding that pfSense 2.4.5-p1 was based on FreeBSD 11.3 (I think I read that somewhere?).

I'll see what I can do to test FreeBSD 11.3 and 12.1 to see if the wireless card will initialize properly and report back. May be a bit, can't afford to take the router offline while I'm work from home and my roomate doesn't like when I break the whole-home-lab when they are trying to surf the web...but I do want to do anything possible to figure this out, just takes longer if I have to dismantle more stuff and swap disks out.

stephenw10

I'll see if I can get hold of one to test with.

mmiller7

It does look like the FreeBSD DVD download offers a LiveCD option after selecting single/multi user mode when I tested a VM just now. I'll download a few versions and see if I can test to see what happens and report back. I'm downloading 11.3, 11.4, 12.1 DVD ISO versions to try. A 9AM meeting I had was cancelled so I may be able to do a quick reboot this morning and try stuff, I'm reasonably confident a LiveCD can't hurt anything and pfSense has proven reliable booting back up as long as I don't have to unhook or change hardware.

If there are any specific commands that would be especially helpful for me to run and capture output of let me know and I'll try to do that, otherwise I think I'm just looking to see that the wireless card is "alive" and initialized.

mmiller7

Small update, I did a few tests but I'm apparently not sufficiently educated in FreeBSD command line operation yet, have to read up more and try again. My initial test was inconclusive/inconsistent on 11.x and looked like it was going to work on 12.1.

I ran out of time to do any more experimenting with 11.x this morning, probably not the rest of today (I'll see).

11.3...was not showing iwm0 when I checked dmesg or logs, didn't show anything in net.wlan.devices.
11.4...showed iwm0 in the dmesg (but not logs?) didn't show anything in net.wlan.devices. Another reboot it did show iwm0 in dmesg. Unsure what I did different, I need to make a script or something to be consistent in what I do.
12.1...showed iwm0 in dmesg and logs. Revisited after more research and it was showing iwm0 in net.wlan.devices. Once I manually ran ifconfig wlan0 create wlandev iwm0 it showed wlan0 in ifconfig but I don't yet know the command to scan for networks to prove it's alive.

I think I'd like to try and come up with a list (or script) of commands to run and capture the output to a textfile on removable media so I can report back more accurate findings. Maybe also run it twice each version to prove it's repeatable.

I'm open to suggestions of commands to dump any logs/information you think might be useful...