Hardware

Hi! I've been using m0n0 for quite some time now and it's running smooth.
So for a while I've been thinking about getting +wireless in my little apartment (laptop with cables is really a b1tch!!), so I read around on different forums about different wlan-cards, usb etc with various results.  After a while I took the chance and bought a cheap D-Link DWL-G122 (E/R 5), but it didn't work at all. Some people seem to have this USB NIC working smooth, but I don't!

Is anyone here using this NIC as an AP for their m0n0wall? Will it work with beta versions (newer FreeBSD)?

If you have any experience with this little USB-dongle, please share it with me, cause I'm really in need of some 21th century WLAN going on here

(Sorry for my bad english)

From: http://www.freebsd.org/releases/6.2R/hardware-i386.html
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3.6 Wireless Network Interfaces

NCR / AT&T / Lucent Technologies WaveLan T1-speed ISA/radio LAN cards (wl(4) driver)

Lucent Technologies WaveLAN/IEEE 802.11b wireless network adapters and workalikes using the Lucent Hermes, Intersil PRISM-II, Intersil PRISM-2.5, Intersil Prism-3, and Symbol Spectrum24 chipsets (wi(4) driver)

Cisco/Aironet 802.11b wireless adapters (an(4) driver)

Raytheon Raylink 2.4GHz wireless adapters ( ray(4) driver)

Cards supported by the awi(4) driver include:

    BayStack 650

    BayStack 660

    Icom SL-200

    Melco WLI-PCM

    NEL SSMagic

    Netwave AirSurfer Plus

    Netwave AirSurfer Pro

    Nokia C020 WLAN

    Farallon SkyLINE

The original Xircom Netwave AirSurfer is supported by the cnw(4) driver.

Cards supported by the cnw(4) driver include:

    Xircom CreditCard Netwave

    NetWave AirSurfer

The ath(4) driver supports all Atheros Cardbus or PCI cards, except those that are based on the AR5005VL chipset. A list of cards that are supported can be found at http://customerproducts.atheros.com/customerproducts.
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I upgraded my monowall to 1.8.1b545 (which I believe means "newer" FreeBSD).

The monowall still does not recognize my DWl-G122.

I tried pfSense using the same FreeBSD-version, and it worked like a charm. What could be wrong?

I upgraded my monowall to 1.8.1b545 (which I believe means "newer" FreeBSD).

The monowall still does not recognize my DWl-G122.

I tried pfSense using the same FreeBSD-version, and it worked like a charm. What could be wrong?

What is wrong is that the FreeBSD versions being the same isn't enough. The driver for the device has to also be present.

What is wrong is that the FreeBSD versions being the same isn't enough. The driver for the device has to also be present.

Could this be installed manually? I mean the driver.

I don't know if its possible or not. But unless the image is permanently modified somehow, any changes you make will be lost on the next reboot.

It can be done, but you will need to build your own image.  This will require a FeeBSD install (VM is fine) with support for the nic.  A quick howto is here. http://svn.m0n0.ch/wall/branches/freebsd8/build/scripts/README

Note that if you can't fallow that, you may have much more challenging issues down the road.

Could this be installed manually? I mean the driver.

Actually the driver is included. I don't understand why your device is not recognized. Is there anything interesting in the system log that could help?

Actually the driver is included. I don't understand why your device is not recognized. Is there anything interesting in the system log that could help?

When I do dmesg, this is the only thing I can find that I suspect has to do with it:

ugen1.2: <Ralink> at usbus1

I get:

ugen1.2: <Ralink> at usbus1      or

ugen0.2: <Ralink> at usbus0

depending on which machine I try it on. But the device (Ralink RT  RT2870 USB) is not recognized in the m0n0wall GUI.

More on this in the other thread:

http://forum.m0n0.ch/index.php/topic,5657.0.html

These things are so cheap now that I would gladly buy another one if someone could provide a recent global source for one that works such as on ebay.

What I fear is that someone has one that works, has a source for it, but due to the volume of these things being produced, I get one at a later revision letter that doesn't work due to an ID change in the chipset that m0n0wall can't handle.

The major vendors (D-link, Linksys) are very good at changing hardware while keeping the same part number.  So you get Rev (Naught) that works, rev 1 that does not, rev 2 that works with issues, and rev 3 with no firmware on the card...

Somehow we have to find out which freebsd driver is working (if there actually is any) for your USB NICs so we can include it.
We can deal with the "no firmware" problem by using runfw (as seen in the other thread).

I have no idea where to start. Any suggestions?

I don't know either. Not sure how long I have had the device, a year or two perhaps.

Edit:

I plugged the device into a Windows box and looked up the Hardware ID. They are:

USB\VID_148F&PID_5370&REV_0101

I have a feeling that these are important and that m0n0wall (FreeBSD) doesn't recognize it so it never loads a driver.

I have seen similar behavior in the past with GNATBox firewalls, also FreeBSD based. I was using cheap DLINK PCI NICs without any problems until one day I added another what I thought was an identical new NIC to the box. It was not recognized.

Comparing the cards, they they had identical part numbers but different revision letters and were physically identical except for the the single PCI interface chip which were from different vendors.

Where is m0n0wall looking at things like this? There has to be list that is looked at, no?

I'm really not that familiar with FreeBSD, so this is just a random idea that came into my mind:
To find out what driver we are missing here, could you install FreeBSD on a machine and try to use your USB NIC there? If that doesn't work either I think we are out of luck.

If you read thru this thread you can see that the driver author is asking for chipset IDs and he states that these are required for the devices to be recognized. So that is definitely part of the problem.

http://forums.freebsd.org/showthread.php?p=60865