• NetBSD

  • Question about NetBSD wireless and wpa_supplicant

oui

What I meant was going through the steps you detailed in your response.

I've already deleted what I added manually to /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf

Wireless doesn't work at all

    Also, do you use a 5GHz and 2.4GHz dual band router? Some wireless cards don't support 5GHz so connect to your 2.4GHz wifi profile just in case.

      oui

      It's 5G. 2.4 is available on my network. This is a thinkpad t420. iirc I had no issues with the 5G on an install of Debian on the same machine

        nortonham ok after going through that process, on reboot I can see that wpa_supplicant is successful, but the output of ifconfig recognizes the wifi but says
        status: no network.

        It would be easier if you were more verbose:

        • share info about your hardware and the driver attached. Your NIC may only have partial/incomplete support or have been proven to be prone to misbehavior in the past. By the way, are you sure you didn't have to toggle license agreement in sysctl.conf? The man page for the relevant driver would tell so, were that to be the case.

        • share info about about the router and the network; is that WPA1/2, or RSN only? Is it a hidden network?

        • paste here anything related to network configuration (rc.conf, resolv.conf, and ifconfig.* if you created one). Misconfigured interface, routing or IPv6 related problems may be involved.

        • what does service dhcpcd status return?

        • what do ifconfig $interface list scan and wlanctl $interface return?

        • Stop/disable wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd, and run them manually in foreground (as user processes, not as system services), then paste the output here. [Run wpa_supplicant -i $interface -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf followed by dhcpcd $interface].

        • finally run ifconfig again and paste the output.

            JuvenalUrbino

            **My initial thought is it has something to do with the error "/etc/dhcpd.conf is not readable"

            I tried to answer as completely as could.

            It's a thinkpad T420. I don't have the exact wireless device name. I don't believe I had to toggle a license agreement, looking at iwn0 man page it doesn't seem like I needed to.

            The network is RSN, not hidden.

            ###rc.conf

            fconfig iwn0 up
            dhcpd=YES
            dhcpd_flags="-qM iwn0 -b"
            cgd=YES
            wscons=YES
            wpa_supplicant=YES
            wpa_supplicant_flags="-B -D bsd -i iwn0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf"

            /etc/resolv.conf

            domain rr.com
            nameserver 192.168.3.1

            /etc/ifconfig.iwn0

            up
            media autoselect
            dhcp

            *output of dhcpd status

            not running

            *ifocnfig iwn0 list scan

            output is a list of local available networks. Mine are visible.

            wlanctl $interface

            I won't post entire output unless you think it's helpful. I can see my (and other) available networks.

            #dhcpd $interface ##

            Can't open /etc/dhcpd.conf No such file or directory

            But the file exists?

            /var/run/rc.log: I have not posted the whole output because copy/paste is not possible. I am responding here on a different machine.

            /etc/dhcpd,conf not readable

            wpa_supplicant started successfully

                nortonham **My initial thought is it has something to do with the error "/etc/dhcpd.conf is not readable"

                Almost definitely. Your wireless is working properly, but the interface is not being assigned an address:

                *output of dhcpd status

                not running

                And, considering that dhcpcd.conf is not readable, as you wrote below, it's not surprising.

                It's a thinkpad T420. I don't have the exact wireless device name

                Learn how to get it then from the terminal. Shall prove useful in future.

                looking at iwn0 man page it doesn't seem like I needed to.

                correct 🙂

                The network is RSN, not hidden

                good to know, highlighting it as notice for others.

                # rc.conf
                fconfig iwn0 up

                what's that? this is not a rcvar. What you're looking for is:

                ifconfig_iwn0=up

                But you don't need it, since you already brought it up inside ifconfig.iwn0. Pick one of the two, whatever suites you best; but as it is, the configuration is redundant.

                # /etc/resolv.conf

                domain rr.com
                nameserver 192.168.3.1

                Is this really your router's internal address? Was this automatically generated by resolvconf(8), or you edited it by hand?

                # /etc/ifconfig.iwn0

                up
                media autoselect
                dhcp

                Again, the configuration should either take place here or inside rc.conf. Putting dhcp here triggers a hook for dhcpcd(8) to configure the interface and is equivalent to dhcpcd=YES in rc.conf.

                /etc/dhcpd,conf not readable

                Is the comma a typo? I suppose so. Anyway, since you somehow happened to mess with /etc permissions:

                $ chown root:wheel /etc/dhcpcd.conf
$ chmod 644 /etc/dhpcd.conf

                However, at this point I would test all the ownership and permissions of NetBSD's standard files and directories against the common specification:

                $ mtree -e -p / -f /etc/mtree/NetBSD.dist

                This will return all altered permissions, ownership, paths, missing folders and files. Enjoy XD

                You can get the standard dhcpcd.conf for release -9 here.

                    JuvenalUrbino

                    I will respond more thoroughly when I have more time, but I do appreciate your help. This should be really straightforward, so I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. I'm not sure if I did something wrong during the install process, or when trying to edit wpa_supplicant.conf by hand after installing,

                      JuvenalUrbino

                      JuvenalUrbino Stop/disable wpa_supplicant and dhcpcd, and run them manually in foreground (as user processes, not as system services), then paste the output here. [Run wpa_supplicant -i $interface -c /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf followed by dhcpcd $interface].

                      When I run wpa_supplicant as a user process it returns "Successfully initialized wpa_supplicant" and nothing else. The wifi doesn't connect

                      dhcpcd $interface returns "sending commands to master dhcpcd process" and nothing else

                      • rvp replied to this.

                            nortonham There are two different programs here: dhcpcd (the DHCP client, which is what you want) and dhcpd (the DHCP server, so not relevant here). Make sure that the correct config file exists for the program you're running in /etc/rc.conf--usually this is dhcpcd like in ref. files posted by @pin

                                9 days later

                                Well I got wireless working on FreeBSD 🙃

                                I'll give it a shot again on NetBSD and let everyone know what happens

                                • Jay likes this.
                                7 months later

                                Update:

                                It's been several months, and many, many operating systems (BSD's, linuxen, illumos) on my spare T420. I decided to put NetBSD 9.3 on it recently.

                                Wifi is working! I just wish I had an emoji of me banging my head against a wall for not figuring this out at the time ;)

                                What I did to make it work. Firstly, I stopped trying to connect to my local 5ghz network, and just use the 2.4 network. I enabled wpa_supplicant in run time, and then dhcpcd as well. When I was sure everything worked I added the relevant info to rc.conf. On reboot everything worked as expected.

                                A tip for anyone who might come across this thread: Slow down and be patient. I have a lack of patience at times, which definitely stopped me from resolving what was a very simple problem. Hence, why I don't work in IT.................

                                As of now everything works. Relevant rc.conf for anyone who might see this in the future:

                                dhcpcd=YES
                                wpa_supplicant=YES

                                /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf:

                                ctrl_interface=/var/run/wpa_supplicant
                                ctrl_interface_group=wheel

                                network={
                                ssid="myssid"
                                psk="mypassword"
                                }

                                • Jay likes this.
                                2 months later