I just want my WiFi working!

The chapter about wireless networking in the FreeBSD Handbook is a wonderful source of information. Sometimes, however, bits go crazy and you simply cannot diagnose a simple networking issue. Don't be afraid to ask the community if you're stuck. System configuration in a console happens to be intimidating to newcomers.

• Read the chapter related to wireless networking in the FreeBSD Handbook. It should be enough to set up a wireless connection on a FreeBSD machine.

• It might be a good idea to check out Laptops. Maybe someone with a similar machine described how to set up a wireless device.

You're probably looking for sysctl -n net.wlan.devices.

Also, make sure you've actually read the wireless networking chapter.

A driver might be missing. Check out the output of pciconf -lv and look for devices with the network class.

Well, here are a couple of ideas:

• Some drivers require the user to explicitly acknowledge the firmware license. Check out the manual page of the driver you're using for details.
• Remember to load required firmware if needed. Consult your manual.

It was replaced by rtwn(4).

• As of 2018.04.25 some people report that iwm(4) causes a kernel panic when configured via loader.conf(5).

So, although the manual says to add

if_iwm_load="YES"
iwm3160fw_load="YES"

to loader.conf(5), it is sometimes better to add the following line to rc.conf(5) instead:

kld_list="if_iwm iwm3160fw"

(Of course, this is just an example in which we assume that you need firmware for an Intel Corporation Wireless 3160 card.)

Works for phpdave11 (#freebsd, Freenode, 2018.05.09)

• iwm(4) devices do not start automatically for some users when system boots so they add the following command to crontab(1):

@reboot ifconfig wlan0 create wlandev iwm0

• wpa_supplicant.conf(5)
• wpa_supplicant(8)
• There are a lot of example configurations for all sort of setups in /usr/share/examples/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf.

An example configuration has been added to the wpa_supplicant.conf(5) manual page in FreeBSD 12-CURRENT.

wpa_supplicant.conf(5) has a couple of syntactic subtleties, which might be causing this:

• The value of psk should be either a "-quoted passphrase (e.g. "password") or a 256-bit pre-shared WPA key (e.g. c4c5b44ebb507f6c8b10ea42eb30521465c1cc000e432748fa9f87eb68b63cc1). Also, check out wpa_passphrase(8).

• bsdconfig(8)
  • Configure WiFi:

bsdconfig netdev

• wpa_cli(8)
  • Intimidating at first, it is not actually that bad.
  • This is utility is why you put ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant in wpa_supplicant.conf(5).

You may seek help on the following communication channels.

• freebsd-wireless@freebsd.org (lists.freebsd.org)

• Libera IRC:
• EFNet:
  • #freebsd-wifi

See Channels for a list of all the FreeBSD IRC channels.

• Device drivers wiki pages