OpenBSD Journal

OpenBSD reverse engineers more wireless drivers

Contributed by jason on from the your-grandma-would-want-you-to-test-this dept.

Two new wireless drivers have been comitted recently. Grab the newest snapshot (9/16/06) and test them out if you have one of these cards. We don't have much time before OpenBSD 4.0, let's make sure these are ready!

uath(4), a driver for Atheros USB2.0 AR5005UG/AR5005UX chipsets. Based on a black-box analysis of the Windows binary driver. Requires a firmware that is not freely redistributable (see man uath). The driver handles both pre- and post-firmware devices. Contact damien@.

pgt(4), a driver for Connexant/Intersil GT-series devices which can support the Full-Mac firmwares, using the ISL3877, ISL3880, and ISL3890 chips. The pgt driver will not (yet) work on similar devices using the ISL3886 or similar chips which use the Soft-Mac firmwares. Contact mglocker@.

Note: Both drivers require firmware that cannot be redistributed with OpenBSD. Refer to the man pages for download sites and instructions.

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By Anonymous Coward (74.114.186.166) on

    You developers make me want to buy unsupported hardware, just so I can help test when you reverse engineer it :p

  2. By Anonymous coward (84.146.247.45) on

    Whooo, binary blob needed for uath - evil inside!!!1!

    Comments

    1. By Antonios Anastasiadis (213.5.161.18) on

      > Whooo, binary blob needed for uath - evil inside!!!1!
      >

      read again. It says *firmware*, which is different (runs on the hardware it's designed for only) from a binary blob (which runs in kernel space). So it's not such a bad thing, at when it's freely redistributable.

  3. By Simon (84.57.88.158) on

    We don't have much time before OpenBSD 4.0, let's make sure these are ready!

    I don't think it was a wise decission to include this now.
    Commiting this after 4.0-release and than having much more time to test it, would have been better IMHO.
    br> Just my 2 cents...

    Comments

    1. By Nate (65.94.49.17) on

      > We don't have much time before OpenBSD 4.0, let's make sure these are ready!
      > I don't think it was a wise decission to include this now.
      > Commiting this after 4.0-release and than having much more time to test it, would have been better IMHO.br
      > Just my 2 cents...

      No, if it's in the release there is a much greater chance someone will test the hardware - even though support in the initial release may not be so great, it would allow all users, even those that do not use snapshots to test these new drivers and help to improve them.

      Comments

      1. By Simon (193.27.50.75) on

        > > We don't have much time before OpenBSD 4.0, let's make sure these are ready!
        > > I don't think it was a wise decission to include this now.
        > > Commiting this after 4.0-release and than having much more time to test it, would have been better IMHO.
        > > Just my 2 cents...
        >
        > No, if it's in the release there is a much greater chance someone will test the hardware - even though support in the initial release may not be so great, it would allow all users, even those that do not use snapshots to test these new drivers and help to improve them.

        I see. Thanks for explanation.

  4. By Anonymous Coward (83.5.198.225) on

    oh, wow cool, I have two minipci isl 3880 cards that I bought without knowing better at least 2.5 years ago. I never thought I would get to actually use them. Cheers.

  5. By Sten (213.204.211.2) on

    I'd welcome updates to the ath driver, which doesn't work with
    more recent cards using newer RF radios:

    ath0 at pci0 dev 10 function 0 "Atheros AR5212" rev 0x01: irq 11
    ath0: AR5213 7.9 phy 4.5 rf2112a 5.6: RF radio not supported

    I know atheros doesn't play ball, but support would be nice.

    Comments

    1. By Anonymous Coward (80.90.29.23) on

      > I'd welcome updates to the ath driver, which doesn't work with
      > more recent cards using newer RF radios:
      >
      > ath0 at pci0 dev 10 function 0 "Atheros AR5212" rev 0x01: irq 11
      > ath0: AR5213 7.9 phy 4.5 rf2112a 5.6: RF radio not supported
      >
      > I know atheros doesn't play ball, but support would be nice.

      The same here.

    2. By sthen (81.168.66.231) on

      > I'd welcome updates to the ath driver, which doesn't work with
      > more recent cards using newer RF radios:
      >
      > ath0 at pci0 dev 10 function 0 "Atheros AR5212" rev 0x01: irq 11
      > ath0: AR5213 7.9 phy 4.5 rf2112a 5.6: RF radio not supported
      >
      > I know atheros doesn't play ball, but support would be nice.

      You don't mention the os version, there have been some updates since 3.9 though.

      http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sys/dev/ic/ar5212.c

      Comments

      1. By sten (213.204.211.2) on

        > > I'd welcome updates to the ath driver, which doesn't work with
        > > more recent cards using newer RF radios:
        > >
        > > ath0 at pci0 dev 10 function 0 "Atheros AR5212" rev 0x01: irq 11
        > > ath0: AR5213 7.9 phy 4.5 rf2112a 5.6: RF radio not supported
        > >
        > > I know atheros doesn't play ball, but support would be nice.
        >
        > You don't mention the os version, there have been some updates since 3.9 though.
        >
        > http://www.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/sys/dev/ic/ar5212.c

        4.0 / HEAD

    3. By reyk (82.82.169.162) on

      > I'd welcome updates to the ath driver, which doesn't work with
      > more recent cards using newer RF radios:
      >
      > ath0 at pci0 dev 10 function 0 "Atheros AR5212" rev 0x01: irq 11
      > ath0: AR5213 7.9 phy 4.5 rf2112a 5.6: RF radio not supported
      >
      > I know atheros doesn't play ball, but support would be nice.

      please retry with -current

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward (213.204.211.2) sten@blinkenlights.nl on

        > > I'd welcome updates to the ath driver, which doesn't work with
        > > more recent cards using newer RF radios:
        > >
        > > ath0 at pci0 dev 10 function 0 "Atheros AR5212" rev 0x01: irq 11
        > > ath0: AR5213 7.9 phy 4.5 rf2112a 5.6: RF radio not supported
        > >
        > > I know atheros doesn't play ball, but support would be nice.
        >
        > please retry with -current
        >
        >

        ath0 at pci0 dev 10 function 0 "Atheros AR5212" rev 0x01: irq 11
        ath0: AR5213 7.9 phy 4.5 rf2112a 5.6, WOR0W, address 00:13:f7:0d:2b:fe

        That does seem to help, please let me know if I can assist in getting
        11g working for this particular revision.

        Comments

        1. By antonio (84.248.73.204) on www.softwarelibre.net

          > > > I'd welcome updates to the ath driver, which doesn't work with
          > > > more recent cards using newer RF radios:
          > > >
          > > > ath0 at pci0 dev 10 function 0 "Atheros AR5212" rev 0x01: irq 11
          > > > ath0: AR5213 7.9 phy 4.5 rf2112a 5.6: RF radio not supported
          > > >
          > > > I know atheros doesn't play ball, but support would be nice.
          > >
          > > please retry with -current
          > >
          > >
          >
          > ath0 at pci0 dev 10 function 0 "Atheros AR5212" rev 0x01: irq 11
          > ath0: AR5213 7.9 phy 4.5 rf2112a 5.6, WOR0W, address 00:13:f7:0d:2b:fe
          >
          > That does seem to help, please let me know if I can assist in getting
          > 11g working for this particular revision.
          >
          I have the same problem with 11g doesn't work. With the option "ifconfig -m ath0" only appear the different modes with 11b, but not 11g.
          I haven't had problems to access to a 11b router, but with 11g still doesn work.

          But anyway, thanks for you effort to make a free atheros drivers. (sorry for my English)

  6. By Anonymous Coward (71.33.194.36) on

    Cool, I can update to the latest patched BIND, with out having to downlaod source and compile.

    As much as compiling source seems to be the "way" I like to run either releases or snapshots. It has been a couple of weeks since the last snapshot, and with the BIND patch coming out during a source tree freeze in preparation for the next release, those of us running snapshots were waiting for this one.

    Thanks All!

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