DragonFly and WiFi

M M micman857 at yahoo.com
Wed Jan 1 15:47:02 PST 2014


Hello!

Thanks for the help?...
I have solved the problem myself. I write this post in case of some 
other DFLYBSD
newcomer has the same or a similar issue.
I downloaded the DragonFly-x86_64-LATEST-GUI.img file and I installed it 
to a
USB key using the freeware for Windows Win32DiskImager. After that the 
system
was loaded and I logged in as root and I typed "startx", the first thing 
that I
did was to add this line to the file /etc/rc.conf (using ee, the line 
command
editor, or mousepad, the GUI editor) to assign an IP to my machine 
automatically
at the startup (this is good independently from the type of connection):

dhcp_enable="YES"

I searched the driver for my WiFi card (Realtek RTL8191SE Wireless LAN 
802.11n
PCI-E NIC) and/or my external WiFi device (usb/hotspot Huawei Mobile 
WiFi E5776s-
32). I have a laptop Laptop Toshiba Satellite L555.11L). I didn't found the
specific or adaptable drivers. After I tried to use my WiFi device like 
a USB
key and not a hotspot. I read somewhere that it is possible with ugensa 
adding
this line to the file /boot/loader.conf:

ugensa_load="YES"

Not a real progress: it didn't work no more. Then I tried to convert my 
Windows
drivers by ndisgen, the ndis utility for this task (see 
http://leaf.dragonflybsd.
org/cgi/web-man?command=ndis&section=4 or typing "man ndis" at a command 
line ).
It's simple and fast to use, but it's necessary to download the DFLYBSD 
sources
for the release because the .img file doesn't contain them. Because I 
had not an
Internet connection working under DFLYBSD, I was obliged  to download the
sources in a cybercafe to use a Ethernet connection that does not pose any
specific problems . After this I was able to convert the RTL8191SE firmware
without errors, but not the Huawei device driver. To load automatically 
at startup the
RTL8191SE driver and the necessary ndis modules I added these lines to 
/boot/loader.conf:

ndis_load="YES"
if_ndis_load="YES"
rtl8192se_sys_load="YES"  ---> (the driver for RTL8191SE Wireless card)

and I tried some other (theoretically) useful tricks that I found here: 
<http://www.
wonkity.com/~wblock/docs/html/wireless.html> adapting to my necessities.
Nothing happened.
At long last I found the solution thank to the article "NETGEAR 
Universal Wifi
Adapter (WNCE2001)" that I found here: <http://bsdmag.org/system/articles/
attachment1s/14938/original/BSD_11_2012_Run_FreeBSD_as_NAT_INSTANCE_in_Cloud.pdf?
1352285886>. The device is a Ethernet-WiFi-Ethernet adapter (here's the 
manual: <
http://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/WNCE2001/WNCE2001_UM_24Sep10.pdf 
 >).
It is useful to receive the WiFi signal from a router/hotspot if the 
computer
has not a (recognized) WiFi card or USB key. It was experienced by the 
article
author using two releases of GhostBSD and PCBSD. Now it's sure that it 
runs also
with DFLYBSD, theoretically with any PC/Laptop having an Ethernet card 
and with
an external WiFi hotspot. I buy it for 35 ?EUR (about 50 $). This is the 
worst
thing using this method to connect DFLYBSD to a WiFi network.
Before to boot DFLYBSD I attached the device to the Ethernet port and 
the USB
cable to power it (alternatively it's possible to use the power 
adapter). Once
the system loaded, I verified that the Ethernet connection was active using
ifconfig at the command line:

dflyd# ifconfig -a
re0: flags=8843<UP,BROADCAST,RUNNING,SIMPLEX,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
     options=1b<RXCSUM,TXCSUM,VLAN_MTU,VLAN_HWTAGGING>
     inet6 fe80::226:22ff:fefa:c258%re0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x1
     inet 192.168.1.100 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.1.255
     ether 00:26:22:fa:c2:58
     media: Ethernet autoselect (100baseTX <full-duplex>)
     status: active
faith0: flags=8002<BROADCAST,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
lo0: flags=8049<UP,LOOPBACK,RUNNING,MULTICAST> mtu 16384
     options=3<RXCSUM,TXCSUM>
     inet 127.0.0.1 netmask 0xff000000
     inet6 ::1 prefixlen 128
     inet6 fe80::1%lo0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x3
ppp0: flags=8010<POINTOPOINT,MULTICAST> mtu 1500
sl0: flags=c010<POINTOPOINT,LINK2,MULTICAST> mtu 552

The verification was positive and I launched Firefox, the default 
browser of the
XFCE desktop. As DHCP was enabled, normally it must appear a window with 
the
Netgear Smart Wizard. This didn't happen. Then I input into the URL bar the
address of the Netgear Wizard (advanced setting) page: 
<http://www.mywifiext.com/start.htm>
(see here: <http://cjoint.com/14jv/DAbu5gU1WL3.htm>). And voilà! It was
done.
Now I am using DFLYBSD connected to the Internet and I am posting this 
message.

Micman




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