Linksys WPC54G with FreeBSD

Yesterday I posted how I figured out how to use wlan_wep on FreeBSD. Today I received my new Linksys WPC54G wireless 802.11g network adapter. I decided to try using it with FreeBSD 6.0.

When I inserted it into the PCMCIA slot, I got these errors:

cardbus0: CIS pointer is 0!
cardbus0: Resource not specified in CIS: id=10, size=2000
cardbus0:  at device 0.0 (no driver attached)

That didn't look good. I decided to use Bill Paul's ndis driver to get the Windows drivers working with FreeBSD. I posted about this capability two years ago, but today I used it in production.

I had previously tried the ndiscvt utility to turn Windows device drivers into something recognized by FreeBSD. Looking at the man pages, I soon learned of the new ndisgen a text-driven wizard to facilitate using ndis. Here's how it worked for me.

First (using a wired connection) I downloaded the latest version of the Windows drivers for my WPC54G. I saw the Linksys site offered downloads for WPC54G versions 1 through 5. Looking closely at the card itself, I saw I had version 3. (I saw nothing resembling a version number on the box.) I downloaded and extracted the 32 MB .zip containing the Windows files.

In the WPC54G Setup Wizard 3.1/Driver/NT directory I saw three files:

-rw-r--r--  1 richard  richard    8266 Apr 19  2005 LSBCMNDS.cat
-rw-r--r--  1 richard  richard   31738 Apr 19  2005 LSBCMNDS.inf
-rw-r--r--  1 richard  richard  371712 Feb 11  2005 bcmwl5.sys

The last two were the ones I needed. I copied them to /home/richard/tmp, and changed into that directory.

Next I started ndisgen and saw this screen. I decided to cut to the chase and begin at step 3.

        ==================================================================
        ------------------ Windows(r) driver converter -------------------
        ==================================================================

        This script is designed to guide you through the process
        of converting a Windows(r) binary driver module and .INF
        specification file into a FreeBSD ELF kernel module for use
        with the NDIS compatibility system.

        The following options are available:

        1] Learn about the NDIS compatibility system
        2] Convert individual firmware files
        3] Convert driver
        4] Exit

        Enter your selection here and press return: 3

Now I'm prompted for the .inf file:

        ==================================================================
        ------------------ Windows(r) driver converter -------------------
        ==================================================================

                        INF file validation


        A .INF file is most often provided as an ASCII file, however
        files with multilanguage support are provided in Unicode format.
        Please type in the path to your .INF file now.

        > /home/richard/tmp/LSBCMNDS.inf

        This .INF file appears to be ASCII.

        Press return to continue... 

Now I'm prompted for the .sys file.

        ==================================================================
        ------------------ Windows(r) driver converter -------------------
        ==================================================================

                        Driver file validation


        Now you need to specify the name of the Windows(r) driver .SYS
        file for your device. Note that if you are running FreeBSD/amd64,
        then you must provide a driver that has been compiled for the
        64-bit Windows(r) platform. If a 64-bit driver is not available
        for your device, you must install FreeBSD/i386 and use the
        32-bit driver instead.

        Please type in the path to the Windows(r) driver .SYS file now.

        > /home/richard/bcmwl5.sys

        This .SYS file appears to be in Windows(r) PE format.

        Press return to continue... 

Now I'm prompted for to confirm conversion.

        ==================================================================
        ------------------ Windows(r) driver converter -------------------
        ==================================================================

                        Driver file conversion

        The script will now try to convert the .INF and .SYS files
        using the ndiscvt(1) utility. This utility can handle most
        .INF files; however, occasionally it can fail to parse some files
        due to subtle syntax issues: the .INF syntax is very complex,
        and the Windows(r) parser will sometimes allow files with small
        syntax errors to be processed correctly which ndiscvt(1) will
        not. If the conversion fails, you may have to edit the .INF
        file by hand to remove the offending lines.

        Press enter to try converting the files now: 

        Conversion was successful.

        Press enter to continue... 

There aren't any additional firmware files, so I hit enter below.

        ==================================================================
        ------------------ Windows(r) driver converter -------------------
        ==================================================================

                        Firmware file conversion

        If your driver uses additional firmware files, please list them
        below. When you're finished, just press enter to continue. (If your
        driver doesn't need any extra firmware files, just press enter
        to move to the next step.)

        > 

Nothing happens here.

        ==================================================================
        ------------------ Windows(r) driver converter -------------------
        ==================================================================


        List of files converted firmware files:


        Press enter to continue... 

Now ndisgen creates a kernel module for me.

        ==================================================================
        ------------------ Windows(r) driver converter -------------------
        ==================================================================

                        Kernel module generation


        The script will now try to generate the kernel driver module.
        This is the last step. Once this module is generated, you should
        be able to load it just like any other FreeBSD driver module.

        Press enter to compile the stub module and generate the driver
        module now: 


        Generating Makefile... done.
        Building kernel module... done.
        Cleaning up... done.

        The file bcmwl5_sys.ko has been successfully generated.
        You can kldload this module to get started.

        Press return to exit. 

My directory now has a kernel module for my wireless card.

orr:/home/richard/tmp$ ls -alh
total 868
drwxr-xr-x   2 richard  richard   512B Feb  6 18:56 .
drwxr-xr-x  15 richard  richard   1.0K Feb  6 18:55 ..
-rw-r--r--   1 richard  richard    31K Feb  6 18:52 LSBCMNDS.inf
-rw-r--r--   1 richard  richard   363K Feb  6 18:52 bcmwl5.sys
-rwxr-xr-x   1 richard  richard   420K Feb  6 18:55 bcmwl5_sys.ko

I load the kernel module and check dmesg output.

orr:/home/richard/tmp$ sudo kldload ./bcmwl5_sys.ko
orr:/home/richard/tmp$ dmesg | grep ndis
ndis0:  mem 0x88000000-0x88001fff irq 11 at device 0.0 on cardbus0
ndis0: NDIS API version: 5.1
ndis0: Ethernet address: 00:14:bf:22:be:12

Bingo. I have a ndis0 interface. Let's see it.

orr:/home/richard/tmp$ ifconfig ndis0
ndis0: flags=8802 mtu 1500
        ether 00:14:bf:22:be:12
        media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect
        status: no carrier
        ssid "" channel 1
        authmode OPEN privacy OFF txpowmax 100 protmode CTS

A look at the loaded kernel modules shows my custom kernel module, if_ndis, and ndis are loaded.

orr:/home/richard/tmp$ kldstat              
Id Refs Address    Size     Name
 1   18 0xc0400000 63072c   kernel
 2    2 0xc0a31000 74b0     snd_csa.ko
 3    3 0xc0a39000 1d408    sound.ko
 4    1 0xc0a57000 c3a4     r128.ko
 5    2 0xc0a64000 eeec     drm.ko
 6   16 0xc0a73000 568dc    acpi.ko
 7    1 0xc2003000 69000    bcmwl5_sys.ko
 8    1 0xc206c000 b000     if_ndis.ko
 9    2 0xc2077000 13000    ndis.ko

Before I can bring up the card, I load the wlan_wep module as explained yesterday.

orr:/home/richard/tmp$ kldload wlan_wep

Now I'm ready to bring up the card.

orr:/home/richard/tmp$ sudo ifconfig ndis0 inet 192.168.2.5 netmask 255.255.255.0 ssid shaolin 
 wepkey 0xmykey deftxkey 1 wepmode on

No errors -- let's check ndis0

orr:/home/richard/tmp$ ifconfig ndis0
ndis0: flags=8843 mtu 1500
        inet 192.168.2.5 netmask 0xffffff00 broadcast 192.168.2.255
        inet6 fe80::214:bfff:fe22:be12%ndis0 prefixlen 64 scopeid 0x4 
        ether 00:14:bf:22:be:12
        media: IEEE 802.11 Wireless Ethernet autoselect (OFDM/54Mbps)
        status: associated
        ssid shaolin channel 1 bssid 00:13:10:65:2f:ad
        authmode OPEN privacy ON deftxkey 1 wepkey 1:104-bit txpowmax 100
        protmode CTS

Looks good -- I'll add a default route and ping Google.

orr:/home/richard/tmp$ sudo route add default 192.168.2.1
add net default: gateway 192.168.2.1
orr:/home/richard/tmp$ ping -c 1 www.google.com
PING www.google.com (72.14.203.104): 56 data bytes
64 bytes from 72.14.203.104: icmp_seq=0 ttl=233 time=270.746 ms

--- www.google.com ping statistics ---
1 packets transmitted, 1 packets received, 0% packet loss
round-trip min/avg/max/stddev = 270.746/270.746/270.746/0.000 ms

Awesome. To make life easier, I copy my new kernel module to the location other kernel modules are stored.

orr:/home/richard/tmp$ sudo cp bcmwl5_sys.ko /boot/kernel/

Finally I create a short shell script to automate the process of bringing the card up once it's inserted.

#!/bin/sh
kldload bcmwl5_sys
kldload wlan_wep
ifconfig ndis0 inet 192.168.2.5 netmask 255.255.255.0 ssid shaolin  wepkey 0xmykey deftxkey 1 wepmode on
route add default 192.168.2.1

Everything works; in fact, I'm posting while using the card now.