Look for WiFi networks under FreeBSD?

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 >> Stay informed about: Look for WiFi networks under FreeBSD? 

John R. Levine wrote:
> Following the advice in the FreeBSD handbook, to get the WiFi chip in my
> Centrino laptop going, I found the Windows driver for it on Intel's
> website, wrapped the Project Evil ndis driver around it, and whaddaya
> know, it came right up.
>

By the way since you have a centrino laptop, there is a *native* driver
for the wifi chip, due to Damien Bargamini, directly in the base system
for FreeBSD-6.0 due to be released next week!
It is ipw.ko or iwi.ko according to the model.

> Is there any way to tell it to look for available WiFi networks? The
> Windows driver must be able to do so, since it does so under Windows,
> but there's no way I can see under FreeBSD even to ask it to look.
>

Look at the ssid subcommand of ifconfig.

> R's,
> John

--

Michel TALON
 >> Stay informed about: Look for WiFi networks under FreeBSD? 

>As root, try "ifconfig ndis0 up scan"


# ifconfig ndis0 up scan
ifconfig: scan: bad value

# man 8 ifconfig | grep -i scan
#


Ok, I did that. Any more suggestions?

R's,
John

PS: Running 5.4, if it matters.
 >> Stay informed about: Look for WiFi networks under FreeBSD? 

>By the way since you have a centrino laptop, there is a *native* driver
>for the wifi chip, due to Damien Bargamini, directly in the base system
>for FreeBSD-6.0 due to be released next week!

Great, I'll give it a try.

>Look at the ssid subcommand of ifconfig.

In 5.4 it lets me set the ssid, which is essential, but it doesn't
have any way to ask what ssids it can see.

R's,
John
 >> Stay informed about: Look for WiFi networks under FreeBSD? 

After replacing John R. Levine with a small shell script on Saturday 29
Oct 2005 18:18, the following appeared on stdout:

> PS: Running 5.4, if it matters.

It does, and I apologise for the tone of the first reply. This makes the
problem no trivial. Wicontrol is the command you need in that case, but
I'm not sure that it works with the ndisulator. Kismet won't, I think, as
it relies on radiotap.

wicontrol -i ndis0 -L

YMMV as I've never used this with an ndis interface. The manpage,
admittedly on 6.0, seems to state it works only with the natively
supported cards.

man 8 wicontrol

If that doesn't work, your options are find the AP settings from the AP
admin or upgrade to 6.0. Support for wireless networking has been
*vastly* improved in 6.0, and upgrading from 5.4 is quite painless. 6.0
also has native support for the Intel Centrino.
--
Chronos
 >> Stay informed about: Look for WiFi networks under FreeBSD? 

>wicontrol -i ndis0 -L

Reads info from the driver but doesn't do anything else. Bummer.

>If that doesn't work, your options are find the AP settings from the AP
>admin or upgrade to 6.0. Support for wireless networking has been
>*vastly* improved in 6.0, and upgrading from 5.4 is quite painless. 6.0
>also has native support for the Intel Centrino.

I think I'll wait a little while for 6.0 to shake out, then upgrade.
Until then, in the relatively few cases that I don't know what SSIDs
are available I can reboot into Windows for a minute to find out.

Thanks!
 >> Stay informed about: Look for WiFi networks under FreeBSD?