OpenBSD Journal

New wireless drivers need testing

Contributed by sean on from the test until your eyes bleed dept.

Jonathan Gray kindly pleads:

Lots of new drivers have recently become functional in the lead up to the next release. So we really need people to run with the snapshots and try them out.

Some of the drivers we are in particular interested in feedback on are:

rum(4) 2nd Generation Ralink Technology USB 802.11 wireless. This is basically Ralink's replacement for ural(4) there is both a MIMO version (RT2601USB) and a non MIMO version (RT2501USB). So far we have only tested with a small number of non MIMO devices we have. Many thanks to Ralink for providing documentation and allowing us to distribute firmware to their devices once again. Contact niallo@, damien@, jsg@.

acx(4) Texas Instruments ACX100/ACX111 PCI/CardBus 802.11 wireless. This a port of DragonFly BSD's acx(4) driver which uses our firmware loading framework instead of a seperate userland program among other changes. TI won't even respond to requests for allowing their firmware to distributed, so we can't include it. The man page details a package that can be installed with pkg_add(1) in a similiar manner to the Intel wireless drivers. Contact jsg@, mglocker@.

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By Strog (64.207.240.34) on http://strog.org

    I was wondering when we'd see more support for MIMO devices. Nice work.

    I have PCI ACX100 card at home gathering dust waiting for drivers. I'll break it out and try a snapshot.

  2. By Anonymous Coward (82.43.92.127) on

    Can you tell us which other drivers comprise "lots", please? The daily changelog doesn't mention them.

    Comments

    1. By Strog (64.207.240.34) on http://strog.org

      > Can you tell us which other drivers comprise "lots", please? The daily changelog doesn't mention them.

      I see zyd(4) in the new drivers but didn't see any other new ones on my skimming. I do see a lot of changes and improvements to existing drivers. Several changes in ifconfig(8) made it possible to completely remove wicontrol from the picture.

      Comments

      1. By phessler (64.173.147.26) on

        zyd(4) isn't fully functional just yet, its in the tree so multiple people can work on the driver.

    2. By Anonymous Coward (68.227.41.220) on

      > Can you tell us which other drivers comprise "lots", please? The daily changelog doesn't mention them.


      msk - Marvell Yukon-2 based Gigabit Ethernet adapters
      arc - Areca Technology Corporation RAID Controller
      bnx - Broadcom NetXtreme II Gigabit Ethernet adapter driver (also on undeadly)
      ucycom - USB support for Cypress microcontroller based serial adapters
      uark - Arkmicro Technologies ARK3116 based serial adapters driver

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (81.57.42.108) on

        > > Can you tell us which other drivers comprise "lots", please? The daily changelog doesn't mention them.
        >
        >
        > msk - Marvell Yukon-2 based Gigabit Ethernet adapters
        > arc - Areca Technology Corporation RAID Controller
        > bnx - Broadcom NetXtreme II Gigabit Ethernet adapter driver (also on undeadly)
        > ucycom - USB support for Cypress microcontroller based serial adapters
        > uark - Arkmicro Technologies ARK3116 based serial adapters driver

        Plus, if I'm not wrong:
        wpi(4) - blob-free driver for Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG
        zyd(4) - Zydas ZD1211, wifi chipset
        mfi(4) - LSI MegaRAID SAS
        azalia(4) - Generic High Definition Audio device driver
        udcf(4) - Gude ADS Expert mouseCLOCK DCF77/HBG time signal station receiver
        nmea(4) - time delta sensors
        onewire(4) - 1-Wire bus (and gpiow(4) etc. too)

        And maybe some new i2c chips support...
        So that's a lot, with the afformentioned rum(4), acx(4), msk(4), bnx(4), ucycom(4) and uark(4), even if not everything is perfectly finished yet.

  3. By Pablo Méndez Hernández (84.77.234.80) on

    Thanks to rum(4) rigth now my Sun Ultra 5 acts as a 802.11g AP and firewall for my home network :)

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (69.195.92.188) on

      > Thanks to rum(4) rigth now my Sun Ultra 5 acts as a 802.11g AP and firewall for my home network :)

      I've got a DWL-G122 rev B1. Can I get it to use the new rum(4) driver instead of ural(4)?

  4. By Renaud (85.201.63.39) on

    Why bother with ACX if TI doesn't even bother to answer requests?
    Answering to the mail, even by a "no" is the smallest polite thing they could do, not even answering is like an insult. If they are not even capable of answering, please respect their wishes and don't buy their stuff, dot.

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (85.144.40.196) on

      Well it is allways more difficult then just "not buying there stuff". For me for example, I am looking for a new mini-pci wifi device for my x31 thinkpad. The brands that do support openbsd are not the most best devices.

      Fore example: Senao does have 100 or 200mW output. While ralink only have 50mW. If you have some good advice for a good mini-pci device which have good output and also good manufactor support for openbsd and good functionality under openbsd, please give feedback on this topic.

      We also want good specs of the hardware, you know.

  5. By Anonymous Coward (24.255.207.163) on

    I have two sets of cards, and they have never worked in any mode. I have head lots of commotion on efnet from others saying the same. Can someone look into fixing our poor nelgected drivers, so I can upgrade my AP to 108Mbit 5GHz?

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