Not able to get WiFi up and running.

TanneR

Hey again,
I've replaced the old WiFi card (Intel Wireless AC 9260) with the new one (Intel Dual Band Wireless AC 3160) that seems to be supported by the iwm driver/firmware that NetBSD has to offer. I've tried to get working WiFi now for probably the last 3 and a half hours and I honestly have no idea what is not working. I've tried using the autoconfig from the installer that the 9.1 ISO has and that supposedly connected me with an open Telekom Phone WiFi which doesn't give me any WiFi. So I tried using wpa_supplicant but that didn't work. I tried to connect to my regular WiFi first which uses WPA2 so I wrote the config (I tried an automatic config with wpa_passphrase as well) and it didn't work.

Next I removed all passwords and security from my other router so that literally everyone could join in hopes of the autoconfig connecting to that router with the stronger wifi which is literally right next to the Laptop (Dell XPS 15 9560). No luck, it didn't go for the open WiFi. After that I tried using wpa_supplicant and ifconfig to connect to the now completely open WiFi network which, surprise surprise, didn't work. I tried literally everything that I was able to find (and understand I guess) but nothing has worked and I am honestly pretty hopeless right now.

I went ahead and did a dmesg | less to see if there was any errors or things that looked weird or "out of place". I got like 20 lines telling me the following:
iwm0: autoconfiguration error: fatal firmware error
iwm0: autoconfiguration error: could not init bt coex (error 35)

I'm not familiar with those error messages but the fatal firmware error is pretty obvious, right? I thought the card was supported? Why am I getting a firmware error now? The firmware is literally a file on the install USB. What here is not working? I'd love to run NetBSD on my Laptop. I've spent hours getting to know new stuff in a VM, learning about the rc.conf and all the great things about this OS. But apparently it doesn't want me to run it or whatever. I honestly have no idea at this point.

Any help would be really appreciated, thanks in advance for any response really.

TanneR Could this be of any help?
https://archive.unitedbsd.com/t/netbsd-desktop-pt-2-set-up-wireless-networking-on-netbsd-with-wpa-supplicant-and-dhcpcd/281

To get it to work on the installer you need to drop to console, confugure the wifi and get back into the installer to finish the installation.

TanneR

pin Already went through quite literally all of what was said in that guide. Still, no luck. But thanks for the suggestion though.

EDIT: I decided to just go through with the tutorial 1:1 (changing the name of the interface and WiFi network of course) and when I do that and reboot, the USB Stick with NetBSD can't boot anymore. It effectively breaks when trying to fix it.

EDIT2 (this is getting annoying honestly): It doesn't break, only once. After I force/acpi shutdown the Laptop and reboot, it boots but it still doesn't have WiFi.

rvp

TanneR

Can you post the complete output of:
pcictl pci0 list -N
Drop into the boot-loader after booting the install image, then at the prompt, boot the kernel with verbose and debug messages turned on:
boot-loader> boot -v -x
After the system boots, drop into a shell prompt and save the dmesg output. Post that here.
dmesg > /tmp/dmesg.txt

TanneR

rvp How do I post the output when there's no way to transfer the files between my two devices? It's not like I can share it over WiFi (lol). I tried just writing the output to a file and taking that from the USB but whenever I want to go into the USB, my other system (Windows 10 🤢) just tells me that it has to format the USB.

TanneR

rvp
pcictl pci0 list -N
https://pastebin.com/iRWthzGa

dmesg
https://pastebin.com/dK0T2ycu

nia

I wrote this on configuring wifi. http://netbsd.org/docs/network/wavelan.html

My main recommendations is to use wpa_supplicant for everything, including associating with open networks. The behavior to associate with an open network by default will be gone from future releases because most people found it annoying, most open networks aren't really open any more.

I've never seen the "bt coex" message before, hopefully it isn't failing too early. iwm is finicky and I've found that the best solution is leaving it alone and letting wpa_supplicant handle association. I use wpa_cli for scanning for networks. The reason I suggested a USB device in your last thread is that the hardware is a lot less problematic.

rvp

TanneR I tried just writing the output to a file and taking that from the USB but whenever I want to go into the USB, my other system (Windows 10 🤢) just tells me that it has to format the USB.

Create a temp partition on some USB-stick and format it using newfs_msdos:

newfs_msdos -F 16 /dev/rdkN

where, N is the disk num. of the partition you created. Mount and copy the files there.

EDIT: Or, if you wrote the NetBSD-9.1_STABLE-amd64-install.img.gz image, the USB-stick will already have an MS-DOS formatted partition (EFI ESP) which you can use.

nia I wrote this on configuring wifi. http://netbsd.org/docs/network/wavelan.html

Excellent--most helpful.

rvp

TanneR No errors from iwm at all:

$ fgrep iwm0 dmesg.txt
[     1.040511] iwm0 at pci2 dev 0 function 0: vendor 8086 product 08b4 (rev. 0x93)
[     1.040511] iwm0: interrupting at msi2 vec 0
[     2.928539] iwm0: Ch. 1: valid +ibss active -radar -dfs +wide +40MHz -80MHz -160MHz
...
[     2.928539] iwm0: Ch. 165: valid -ibss passive -radar +dfs +wide -40MHz -80MHz -160MHz
[     2.928539] iwm0: hw rev 0x160, fw ver 17.352738.0, address 2c:6e:85:87:85:2f
[     2.928539] iwm0: 11a rates: 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps
[     2.928539] iwm0: 11b rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps
[     2.928539] iwm0: 11g rates: 1Mbps 2Mbps 5.5Mbps 11Mbps 6Mbps 9Mbps 12Mbps 18Mbps 24Mbps 36Mbps 48Mbps 54Mbps
$

The only significant errors there are from the GPU--but we'll get to that later.

Try the guide written up by @nia to configure the WiFi. We'll see if there are any new errors if you can't connect. Do another dmesg then and post.

TanneR

rvp
dmesg after going through the tutorial. https://pastebin.com/7qnev6Cw

It seems to be the exact same. The card can detect nearby WiFi network with wpa_cli scan_results but the connecting part doesn't work it seems. I still get a no route to host or something like that when pinging 8.8.8.8. Pinging websites just results in ping telling me that it couldn't establish a connection to the host.

EDIT: When I powered off this time using "poweroff" I got iwm0: fatal firmware error as green text on the screen. There was nothing different in the dmesg though and since it just appeared after I typed poweroff, I can't check afterwards either.

rvp

TanneR but the connecting part doesn't work it seems. I still get a no route to host or something like that when pinging 8.8.8.8. Pinging websites just results in ping telling me that it couldn't establish a connection to the host.

Please post the exact error messages and the commands you ran. Use the script command for this.

To ping the outside world you must assign the interface an IP address, then setup a default route--this is not fully covered in the mini-doc written up by @nia because it is part of general networking setup ie. the same for wired as well as wireless connections.

Did you assign the wireless interface an address (manual or DHCP) and assign a default route? Because it seems to me that your wireless card is up and running fine.

TanneR

rvp Thanks for the reply! First, I don't think I manually assigned any IP since a friend of mine that I asked said that most "modern" wifi networks automatically assign you an IP. Could you maybe tell me how I would go about assigning these things manually? I really don't want to mess more/anything up since, apparently the WiFi card is not the issue.

rvp

TanneR most "modern" wifi networks automatically assign you an IP

Yes, that's DHCP which can be activated, for testing purposes, by just running dhcpcd -1 -w iwm0.
But, for installation of NetBSD, you should follow what the HOWTO says:

For advice on configuring WiFi, see the 802.11 documentation. You can do this in the installer
by exiting the installer and dropping to a shell, then entering the installer again with exit.

Let the installer do the networking stuff since the card is up.

What interests me here is that you're not seeing this message whch you mentioned before:

iwm0: autoconfiguration error: fatal firmware error
iwm0: autoconfiguration error: could not init bt coex (error 35)

Can you boot normally--ie. without the -v -x flags--and see if your card still gives that error? Sometimes, turning on debug messages slows down/changes somewhat the order of the kernel's running of various functions and that can make driver bugs appear/disappear.

TanneR I really don't want to mess more/anything up since, apparently the WiFi card is not the issue.

😁 What a newbie statement that is--I'll bet all the old hands on the board here are just sniggering in their sleeves at this.
Believe me mate, this is just the first of the many install you'll be doing. Don't be afraid of making a mess--it's how you learn.

TanneR

rvp
It works! I don't really know what did it but it's likely to be the DHCP thing. I feel really stupid for having overlooked the service dhcpcd restart command but that gave me WiFi, even if just for a second. After that I read through the man-pages of wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd and added the (what I think) required rc.conf commands/services. I uploaded a "censored" version of my rc.conf and wpa_supplicant.conf where I changed the WiFi passwords and such in case anyone else encounters the same problems that I encountered.

rvp What interests me here is that you're not seeing this message whch you mentioned before:

The firmware error and bt coex error were something that I encountered the first time I tried getting WiFi working and I haven't been able to replicate the error yet. I do believe that this is a good thing. 😅

rvp Can you boot normally--ie. without the -v -x flags--and see if your card still gives that error?

Nope. I didn't get the error on the install USB at the end of this entire process and when I boot the installed NetBSD normally, I get no errors at all.

rvp 😁 What a newbie statement that is--I'll bet all the old hands on the board here are just sniggering in their sleeves at this.
Believe me mate, this is just the first of the many install you'll be doing. Don't be afraid of making a mess--it's how you learn.

I haven't had a lot of experience (or any for that matter) with *BSD outside of a Virtual Machine. I tried DragonFlyBSD on a broken Laptop before and I guess it worked? It wasn't really what I was looking for in an OS but it worked so... yeah.

/etc/rc.conf: https://pastebin.com/ebPBKLQv
/etc/wpa_supplicant.conf: https://pastebin.com/XepDAbFU